Year in Review

Since we launched Learning Futures last summer, we’ve aimed to publish an issue early in the first and third weeks of each month. As you might have realized, we didn’t publish an issue last week, the third week of December. What can we say? Busy schedules, a touch of COVID, and holiday prep knocked us off our game. We’re sorry. As we move into 2024, we promise to do our best to show up for you twice a month, starting the week of January 8th. That said, we did have some time last week to look back over the twelve issues we’ve produced since July. We were struck by the persistence of three themes across the signals of change we highlighted:

• the impact of climate change on our communities;

• the challenges to social cohesion;

• and the potential for artificial intelligence and other forms of automation to disrupt how we live, work, create, and interact.

In many ways, we aren’t surprised. These dynamics echo what Leah Zaidi and the team at KnowledgeWorks identified as critical to the emerging future. Moreover, the last year provided ample evidence of how these dynamics are playing out in the present.

Climate change in our communities

In 2023, extreme weather led to 25 billion-dollar disasters in the United States, causing more than $80 billion in damages combined. The 5th National Climate Assessment, published in November, confirmed that "the impacts of climate change will continue to intensify over the next decade." In other words, over the next decade “many of the extreme events and harmful impacts that people are already experiencing will worsen and it will become “harder to maintain safe homes and healthy families; reliable public services; a sustainable economy; thriving ecosystems, cultures, and traditions; and strong communities.” The evidence of climate change's impact is increasingly visible in our local communities. We've seen this through a range of events that hit close to home:  

• In one of our first issues, we focused on the series of school closures in the United States and Great Britain related to heatwaves and wildfire smoke. In September, we reported on FEMA’s new disaster resilience zones. These zones will help FEMA target limited resilience funding and assistance to underserved areas facing the highest natural hazard risks.

• In October, we explored the impacts of extreme weather, shortly after New York City experienced rain so intense subways flooded and the First Street Foundation published a study estimating that one in nine residents in the contiguous United States is at significant risk of storms that will bring at least 50% more water than their local infrastructure can handle.

• And a few weeks ago, we dug deep into implications for schools of what some are calling the climate insurance bubble.

The year wasn’t all bad news on the climate change front, though.

• Last month, students in Boulder concluded a successful campaign to convince their school board to pass a Green New Schools resolution.

• In August, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child introduced General Comment No. 26, affirming children’s right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, and calling for urgent government action in response to the climate emergency, biodiversity collapse, and pervasive pollution.  

At about the same time, a court ruled in favor of 16 youth plaintiffs who claimed that Montana’s constitution required the state to consider the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions in its decisions.

Artificial intelligence and automation

This year also saw the rapid proliferation of generative AI – like ChatGPT – and the expansion of automation in all corners of the economy, from Amazon fulfillment centers to fast casual restaurants. Next year a factory capable of building 10,000 two-legged robots a year will open in Oregon.  

• In July, we imagined a high tech version of learning pods, in which an AI develops and guides students through a highly personalized, adaptive curriculum.

• In August, we investigated a world of ubiquitous, AI-augmented, human-machine collaboration, and how some have begun to imagine and work toward a Fifth Industrial revolution, one that fosters a more balanced working relationship between increasingly smart technologies and humans; is characterized by harmonious human-machine collaborations; emphasizes the well-being and resilience of both humans and nature; and enhances human intelligence.

And in October, we reported on advances in brain-computer interfaces and ‘mind-reading’ AI and discussed their implication for health care, the workplace, and social spaces.

Fraying communities

This was also a year in which Americans of all persuasions grew increasingly distrustful of public institutions and each other. These dynamics are part of a long-term trend toward polarization that we highlighted in several issues.

• In August, we looked into the growing capability of editing tools and AI to disseminate misinformation and lead us “to inhabit mutually unintelligible worlds,” unable to agree on what is true.

• In October, news that Montana, Missouri, and Texas have severed ties with the American Library Association and that legislators in at least nine additional states are advocating for similar actions, led us to imagine a future in which “neighborhoods fracture into disparate ‘micro-realities,’ communities might evolve beyond traditional geographical boundaries, forming around shared interests or beliefs instead, and navigating diverse realities will be an essential skill.”

• In November, we examined the forces driving families from a wide variety of background to forego public education and design ala carte educational experiences that align with their specific values and needs. For us, this unbundling of schooling is both a symptom of – and a potential accelerant – of disunity in our communities.

While we sometimes feel that the centrifugal forces threatening our communities are so powerful that the center cannot hold, we do see signs that we are not irredeemably divisive.  Two recent studies – one by YouGov and one from The University of Maryland – revealed that bipartisan majorities agree on a host of issues and policies related to election reform, education, the environment, health care, guns, and foreign affairs. “What’s striking is that when citizens think through the issues and hear both sides, they often find common ground–clearly, much more so than Members of Congress,” said Steven Kull, who helped led the team at the University of Maryland. We also found centripetal hope in examples of pragmatic, collaborative activism by young people that transcends traditional political lines.

• For instance, a student-led initiative in Texas, which emerged in response to a series of tragic mass shootings, showcases a collective endeavor towards enhancing community safety. These students came together not as partisans, but as concerned citizens, engaging with policymakers and community leaders to advocate for practical solutions to gun violence.

• Similarly, in Indiana, the Knipp siblings' determination to stage a play featuring LGBTQ+ themes—despite the cancellation by their high school due to parental complaints—revealed a deep-rooted community spirit. The overwhelming support for their performance, attended by 1,500 people from various backgrounds, exemplified how cultural expression can serve as a bridge, uniting diverse groups in support of youth expression and inclusivity.

Both examples reflect a generation of young people committed to working collaboratively for tangible change, emphasizing dialogue, understanding, and the shared goal of creating a safer, more inclusive community.

Food for thought

We cannot predict the future, nor do we try. However, we can work discern and understand the forces at play today from which tomorrow's realities will emerge. There is little doubt that climate change, automation, and social cohesion will be formidable forces in shaping the next decade.

The short-term effects of climate change appear unavoidable, with increased heatwaves, storms, droughts, and flooding due to existing greenhouse gas levels. The trajectory of automation and social cohesion, however, appears less certain. Will we steer towards a future where machines augment human abilities, or one where they replace us? Will we cultivate a society marked by division, or one characterized by cooperation and unity?The questions below feel like useful starting points for the conversations about how to help young people prepare for uncertainty and build a future they wish to inhabit:

• How might we integrate climate literacy into all subjects, not just science, to ensure students understand the multifaceted impact of climate change on economies, societies, and ecosystems?

• In what ways might schools foster a connection between students, their local environment, and their communities to inspire a sense of responsibility and empower them to work in support of climate resilience and intergenerational justice?

• What strategies might educators employ to balance the development of technical skills with the cultivation of creative and critical thinking abilities that machines cannot replicate?

• How might schools create learning experiences that simulate future workplaces, where automation is a given, to help students become adaptable and adept at working alongside AI and automation?

• In what ways might schools serve as community hubs to promote dialogue, understanding, and collaboration across diverse groups, fostering social cohesion in a time of increasing polarization?

• How might educators design curricula that not only teach about social issues and cultural differences but also actively engage students in projects that require them to work together to solve community problems?

Thanks for reading this year. We love every part of making this newsletter. We’ll be back the week of January 8th with our next issue. In the meantime, wherever you are in the world and whatever you celebrate, we wish you a happy and peaceful holiday season! 🎄🎁🕯️

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Generative AI Disclosure and Reflections

For this issue, we tried giving our MySignalAnalyzer bot a knowledge base of future scenarios and trend reports so that it could provide more accurate and helpful feedback. That didn’t work so well, which means that we have some learning to do about how knowledge bases work with AIs.  So we worked with Chat-GPT 4, asking it review all the issues we have published and to help us identify key recurring themes. As usual, we had a productive dialogue with our AI intern, as it helped us test our thinking.Draft in hand, we asked Chat-GPT 4 to provide us some prompts we could use with image generators. While they were a useful starting points, we ended up refining the prompts as we  worked with StableDiffusionXL and DALL-E 3 to create a variety of images depicting possible futures based on the three recurring themes.