“I view this question as depending on what happens to current AI, meaning in practice, to current generative AI. For purposes of this exercise, let’s consider two possible outcomes for…
Imagining the Digital Future Center
Latest Research
A New Age of Enlightenment? A New Threat to Humanity?
The Impact of Artificial Intelligence by 2040
Tech experts and the general public envision the future impact of AI
“Future of Digital Life” Experts Canvassing
The predictions of more than 200 global tech experts focus on some major ideas: We will have to rethink what it means to be human and reinvent or replace major institutions
National Public Opinion Survey
Americans are especially concerned about the erosion of personal privacy, their opportunities for employment, how these systems might change their relationships with others and their potential impact on basic human rights
The Imagining the Digital Future Center is a research initiative of Elon University focused on the potential future impact of the digital revolution and what may lie ahead. The Center was established in 2000 and renamed with an expanded research agenda in 2024. Its mission is to discover and broadly share a diverse range of opinions, ideas and original research about the likely evolution of digital change, informing important conversations and policy formation.
Experts’ insights
Such good friends? Digital agents are likely to turn users into unknowing ‘agents of the machine’
“In computer-human interface design, the word ‘agent’ refers to chatbots and other seemingly autonomous entities that act on behalf of the computer in their interactions with us human users. It…
The questions are, ‘Can humans say “no” to AI, and can AI say “no” to humans?’
“There are two critical uncertainties as we imagine 2040 scenarios: “In other words, can humans say ‘no’ to AI, and can AI say ‘no’ to humans? Note that the existence…
Media Monitor
News coverage of our work
- The New Stack: IT Pioneers Assess the Future Impact of AI
- Education Week: “Most Teens Think AI Won’t Hurt Their Mental Health. Teachers Disagree.”
- PCMag: “Experts: AI Will Make Life More Convenient But Less Pleasurable”
- Politico: “What really worries people about AI” – a report on the release of ITDF’s AI 2040 report.
- Compsmag: “Peering into the Future: Experts and Public Predict Impact of AI by 2040 at Elon’s Imagining the Digital Future Center.”
- Fortune: “Huge AI study issues predictions about life in 2035 with one key warning: Our future hinges on ‘the good or ill intent’ of the next generation”
Curation
What we’re reading
- Stanford HCAI: 2024 Artificial Intelligence Index – 500-page report reveals trends in AI, public perceptions and geopolitical dynamics
- Arxiv – Algorithmic Progress in LLMs: They are improving substantially faster than hardware gains per Moore’s Law, the engine of the digital age
- AI Impact: Survey of AI Authors on the Future of AI
- New York Times: How Nations Are Losing a Global Race to Tackle AI’s Harms
- Tim Berners-Lee Calls for Reform: Marking the Web’s 35th Anniversary with a warning
- The Guardian: “What it means to be human is elusive” (editorial)
- Quantum Insider: Comprehensive 2024 list of quantum companies
Predicting the new millennium
From 2000 to 2023 Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center collected and analyzed experts’ insights about the potential digital future in real time, compiling a one-of-a-kind historical record of society’s evolving hopes and fears for the future during a crucially influential 24-year span of communications technology evolution.
- Earlier expert surveys – The 48 comprehensive research reports that formed the foundation of the Imagining the Digital Future Center: thousands of pages of qualitative research collecting and analyzing thousands of experts’ predictions made between 2004 and 2023 about the likely future of digital life in the decades to follow. Search those archives here.
- Event coverage – Documentary journalism reports recorded at 30 global tech gatherings, featuring 6,500 live-on-site video interviews and hundreds of news stories.
- Time capsule – A database of 4,000 expert predictions made between 1990 and 1995 in varied published interviews and official reports from early 1990s gatherings focused on the likely future of digital technology.
Collaboration Project: Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education
Imagining the Digital Future is coordinating a global effort to to help guide development of artificial intelligence policies and practices in higher education. More than 140 higher education organizations, administrators, researchers and faculty members from 47 countries have collaborated to create a position statement with six guiding principles. The statement was released at the 18th annual United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Kyoto, Japan. Learn more on the initiative’s website.