Technological innovation is giving rise to a future infused with the tension between progress and risk. In the coming decades, technological innovation across a range of fields could hasten important advances such as equitable economic growth and material abundance, collective and individual security, and enhanced societal well-being; on the other hand, these same technological innovations could exacerbate economic stagnation, income inequality, ecological disasters, the proliferation of violence and collective insecurity, and an overall decline in physical and psychological health.
Convening prominent experts and scholars from the sciences, social sciences, business, and policy/government, this integrative and multi-disciplinary three-day conference featured a keynote address from Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman as well as morning and afternoon sessions that focus on the effects of emerging technologies—in industrial automation, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and climate science and geoengineering—on our prospects for economic equity, shared and individual security, and overall well-being as a society.
