Exploring Future Scenarios of Artificial Intelligence Development: A Media Scanning Approach

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is driving profound changes in human life, significantly impacting areas such as employment, the economy, communication, warfare, privacy, security, ethics, and healthcare. Despite its current influence, the future evolution and impact of AI remain uncertain. Depicting future scenarios of emerging technologies is a common method for understanding and shaping desired outcomes, as well as preparing for potential future situations. These scenarios can be proposed by various sources, including media and science fiction. Science fiction films, in particular, have a long history of portraying the future of emerging technologies, especially AI. This paper aims to explore future scenarios of AI development.

To conduct this research, first, we reviewed the literature and reports related to the future of AI, which led to the identification of drivers shaping the future. Then, By gathering experts' opinions and conducting a content analysis of science-fiction films with an IMDb score higher than six, relevant to the future of AI, we identified three uncertainties underlying the future of AI. Following our content analysis protocol, we analyzed films and identified evidence of drivers in each film. Eventually, from the intersection of our uncertainties, nine scenarios were obtained, of which four scenarios were logically acceptable.

We found that uncertainties shaping the future of AI are social acceptance, singularity, and legality and regulation, with expert average scores of 4.40, 4.33, and 4.78, respectively. We selected them from the six drivers identified in the literature review, i.e., social acceptance, scope of AI development, singularity, cost-benefit of AI, legality and regulation, and government support. The scenario of AI dominating the world is a dystopian narrative of the future of human beings, where AI takes over power and pushes humans to the outskirts of the cities. In contrast to this scenario, in the utopia scenario, the synergy of humans and AI creates a utopia where humans and AI co-exist and thrive peacefully. The remaining scenarios’ features are located between dystopia and utopia.

Our findings indicate that ‘Utopia: Human and AI Synergy’ is the most optimistic scenario, while ‘AI Domination of the World’ represents the most pessimistic outlook for AI development. The results show that the advantages of AI development are significant for both governments and individuals, necessitating proportionate policies to realize these benefits. However, the potential risks and challenges of AI in the future highlight the need for regulations and restrictions to prevent uncontrolled development and applications of AI.