Artificial intelligence, and specifically, predictive models based on machine learning, will be the basis of future economic and social systems. While a great deal of focus has been placed on job loss in the face of automation, the more profound effect of machine learning will be fundamental changes throughout our technologically based social systems, as we witness the increasing use of machine learning systems in governance roles.
Machine learning has so far shown itself to be a double edged sword in its ability to accelerate social justice: therapy chatbots, for example, have shown how we might scale mental healthcare to include persons who may not be able to afford a therapist. But precrime predictive algorithms in use by some of North America’s largest police forces are biased by flawed data sets and tend to perpetuate racial and economic stereotypes.
My project will research, analyse, deconstruct, and then map trends in machine learning onto a Three Horizons foresight framework with a 12 year time horizon. I will describe a third horizon vision for machine learning as a social and not economic innovation that delivers social impact, second horizon strategies that might steer applications of machine learning towards greater designedness for social justice, and a Theory of Change alternative to the concept of business model to describe how we might implement machine learning strategies for human rather than economic growth.