Three Horizons for AI: Where We Are and Where We're Going

​AI, Work, and What Comes Next

​During our recent hands-on AI workshop, one question kept coming back to the room. As AI speeds up how work gets done, what happens to the people doing the work? Some of us are already using AI as a thought partner every day, and some of us haven't touched it. That gap could grow fast, and it raises real questions about how we value people at work and who gets left behind.

​That question deserves more than a few minutes at the end of a tutorial, so we're giving it a full hour.

​Technology is a tool. How we apply it and how we roll it out into society is the part that matters, and that part is still ours to shape. To help us think about it together, we'll open with about 10 minutes on the Three Horizons framework.

​Three Horizons is a way of looking at change as three patterns happening at the same time:

​Horizon 1 is the way things work now. It's the dominant system we all live inside, the jobs, institutions, and habits that keep things running. It works well enough to stay in place, but it's starting to fit the world less and less.

​Horizon 3 is the future we want. It already exists in small pockets today, in the people and projects quietly doing things differently. It's the vision of what a healthier system could look like.

​Horizon 2 is the messy middle, where the innovations and disruptions live. AI sits squarely here. Some of what happens in Horizon 2 helps us move toward the future we want. Some of it gets pulled back into the old system and just makes Horizon 1 faster and more extractive. Which way it goes depends on the choices people make.

​Using this lens, we'll look at where AI is showing up in our work and communities, what it's propping up, and what it could help us build instead. Then the floor is open.

​No technical background needed. Come with your concerns, your hopes, and whatever you've been chewing on since the workshop.