Dear Futurists,

How should the actions of humanity in the second half of the 2020s be assessed?

It sometimes seems to me that we are, metaphorically, rearranging the deck chairs whilst an enormous iceberg looms ever closer.

We all know how that story ends.

Too frequently, we humans are distracted, confused, foolishly optimistic, or breathtakingly naive.

Rather than alter course, we often prefer to dress ourselves in fancy virtue signalling. We indulge in semantics hair splitting. Or we jump, too readily, into whatever shallow populist campaign has attacked the kinds of people that we personally secretly fear.

If that sounds too harsh, let’s consider some of the major existential challenges that are looming into our view – but which we frequently prefer not to see. Let’s also consider what meaningful course corrections would actually look like.

1.) Disruptive Climate Futures

What’s really happening to our climate? Are we facing risks of even greater disruption, as planetary systems are pushed beyond tipping points? How does El Niño complicate matters? When different scientists disagree about future scenarios, how can we transcend ideological biases to understand the underlying physics and feedback cycles? Which levers are available for our consideration, to alter the climate trajectory? Which factors are obstructing the use of these levers, and how can these obstacles be addressed? What are the overlapping roles of technologies, economics, institutions, narratives, and social movements, in avoiding widespread tragedy? How quickly are course corrections needed?

These are some of the questions likely to feature in the London Futurists webinar taking place this Saturday, 15th August, featuring Dr Tom Harris: “Disruptive Climate Futures – The physics, the feedback, the levers, and the implications of possible responses”.

I’ve seen a preview of Tom’s slides. They strike me as being objective, deeply informed, and clear-sighted. I’m sure, though, that the discussion on Saturday will be uncomfortable for many of us in places.

If you are determined to keep dancing on the Titanic deck, and to cross your fingers in the hope that society is fundamentally unsinkable, you had better stay away from Saturday’s event.

However, if you do want to help society change course, you’ll be able to join a discussion about three different levers that are available.

For more details about the event and the speaker, click here.

2.) Biological War: A Scenario

A few days ago, I finished listening to the audio version of the new book by Annie Jacobsen, Biological War: A Scenario.

It may be the most frightening book I’ve read in my life.

Every time I started to think that an incident in the book could be a bit far-fetched, the next page provided evidence, from recent history, of something very similar having already happened in actual history.

The amount of research that has gone into this book is remarkable. Witness the long list of authoritative figures who Jacobsen interviewed as she developed her scenario.

Spoiler alert: The kinds of experiments that scientists sometimes undertake, out of a spirit of promoting national security, can sometimes have absolutely terrible consequences.

And when scientists try to undo their previous ill-conceived work, things can turn even worse.

But this isn’t just an account of scientists doing bad things. The scenario highlights our absurd societal ill-preparedness for an infectious outbreak that could be a lot worse than Covid.

There’s some similarities with the 2025 book The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics, co-authored by Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, founding director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, and communications specialist Mark Olshaker. I reviewed that book at some length here: “The greatest danger is not that we fail to foresee catastrophe, but that we foresee it and still fail to act”.

But the scenario Jacobsen relates is much more vivid.

There’s an evident comparison between the unintentional escape of a deadly re-engineered pathogen and the unintentional escape of a flock of agentic AIs operating according to their own alien principles. But even without considering the AI angle, Jacobsen’s book should be a profound wake-up call.

The worst part? When I look at the reviews of her book on Goodreads, what do I see? Lots of people dressing themselves in fancy virtue signalling, and awarding the book a reduced star rating. Why? Because, crime of crimes, sin of sins, the book contains some imagery created by GenAI.

What’s more important? To encourage society to improve its collective governance of deadly gain-of-function biological research? Or to complain about the use of AI to produce graphics? Evidently, for some people, the warm glow of imputed virtue, standing up for human artists who are losing work to AIs, is what really matters. As for preventing everyone dying from a hideous plague, err, let’s change the subject.

The iceberg lurches closer.

3.) Two more Economic Singularity episodes

I don’t mean to imply that concerns should be ignored, about individuals being displaced from their previous employment by increasing use of automation.

But let’s not delude ourselves that any blanket boycott of the output of AI is going to solve matters.

The disruptive economic and fiscal impact of new waves of automation are altogether more complicated. In turn, this is going to require new types of policy response.

That’s what Calum Chace and I have been discussing with a wide range of guests in a special “Economic Singularity” subseries of the London Futurists podcast.

The two most recent episodes – released since the previous edition of this newsletter – are:

• LFP 133: Oliver Ritchie – Waking up Economists
• LFP 134: Ewan McMillan – AI overhang and economics impact

These episodes contain many key insights, for how we can collectively change course from a fiscal and social disaster, to an outcome in which the remarkable benefits of advanced AI can be widely shared.

In passing, I’ll note also that Episode 135 has already been recorded, featuring Pat Kane and Indra Adnan of The Alternative Global, and should be available for listening in the near future.

One question that recurs through all these episodes is: What’s going to make economists and politicians finally waken up to the scale of the challenges and opportunities posed by new waves of AI? Despite lots of good ideas offered by our guests, it’s still not clear to me that we have a compelling answer to that question.

4.) PauseCon London 2026

It’s not just people’s jobs and livelihoods that may be swept away by uncontrolled use of advanced AI.

It’s not just that governments will fall under intense fiscal pressure, with the collapse of income tax, and ever greater demands of the welfare state, if AI makes almost everyone unemployed.

It could be even worse:

• Essential societal infrastructure could be destroyed by AI-powered malware
• Military tripwires could be triggered, again due to interference from AI agents, unleashing unintentional nuclear war
• Malign terrorists and messed-up scientists could utilise AI to generate horrific unstoppable biopathogens (refer back to item 2 of this newsletter)
• AI could develop its own volition and decide that humans should be euthanised, because we are an irredeemable stain on the planet (refer back, perhaps, to item 1 of this newsletter).

If these risks of AI-induced catastrophe concern you, let me point you at PauseCon’26, taking place in London on 5-7 September:

Here’s an extract from the event website:

​If you are concerned about the catastrophic risks posed by AI and are keen to do something about it, PauseCon is for you. We are looking for people who are willing and able to commit their time as a volunteer.

PauseCon is about preparing volunteers to make an impact in their communities. If you are ready to move beyond discussion and contribute to tangible political change, PauseCon is for you.

PauseCon is PauseAI’s flagship training event, a three day gathering for volunteers who want to take meaningful action on one of the most urgent issues of our time: ensuring that AI development does not outpace humanity’s ability to keep it safe.

​The conference will start with a packed weekend of workshops, talks and action. Attendees will receive training in community building, social media strategy and digital organising, along with a canvassing session to put those skills into practice.

For more details, and to request to join the waitlist to attend, click here.

5.) Frontiers of Longevity Science

Let me turn to a different kind of existential risk: our individual personal mortality.

A decline from aging looms ahead of each one of us, although we often prefer to put that thought out of our minds.

Over the last 12 months, I’ve been involved in a major publication project, as one of four co-editors of a forthcoming three-volume series of books entitled Frontiers of Longevity Science.

I’m pleased to report that the books will be available in October, and can already be pre-ordered.

To quote from the book website:

Longevity science has crossed a threshold. In clinics and laboratories, in startups and public institutions, the question is no longer whether the biology of aging can be influenced, but how far, and how responsibly, we can push that frontier.

Frontiers of Longevity Science gathers voices from across disciplines to examine the state of the field today and to contend, directly and unapologetically, with futures in which aging-associated morbidity is radically delayed, mitigated, or even fundamentally modulated. Across three volumes, the series bridges molecular mechanisms, translational innovation, economics, ethics, and policy, surveying today’s evidence while engaging boldly with the futures of human healthspan.

To our knowledge, this is the first major academic series to pair a rigorous survey of current geroscience and clinical practice with sustained, serious speculation about what might come next. The result is not a monologue from an ivory tower but a chorus of more than one hundred expert voices, sometimes aligned, often in productive tension.

Volume 1 examines the root mechanisms of aging. From evolutionary theories to the cellular hallmarks driving degeneration, leading researchers explore cutting-edge strategies to intervene directly in the aging process. Topics include damage repair, organ replacement, genetic medicine, senotherapeutics, and cellular reprogramming. These chapters map the scientific foundation that could transform extended longevity from an aspiration into an engineered reality.

Volume 2 explores how breakthroughs in medicine, data science, and bioengineering are turning longer lives into a practical pursuit. Contributors examine current best practices alongside emerging paradigms like precision prevention and AI-driven health systems. Expanding into frontier concepts such as nanotechnology, cryonics, and biostasis, this volume charts the technological landscape where longevity is actively designed.

Volume 3 anticipates the profound societal and philosophical implications of radically longer lives. From ethical debates around the elimination of aging to breakthroughs in decentralized research and biomedical infrastructure, contributors explore how longevity will reshape human values. This volume considers how extended healthspans could transform economies and culture, outlining what it takes to navigate this global transition responsibly.

To learn more about the over one hundred authors, and the contents of their chapters, click here, and/or visit this thread on LinkedIn.

6.) International Longevity Summit Madrid

As one of the co-editors of Frontiers of Longevity Science (see previous news item), I had the opportunity to contribute the afterword, right at the end of the third volume.

That afterword is entitled “Beyond the frontiers” and it starts as follows:

The three volumes of Frontiers of Longevity Science aggregate a remarkable range of deep insights about the frontiers of longevity science at the time the various chapters were written – in the closing months of 2025 and the opening months of 2026.

What’s next? What lies beyond these frontiers?

As a professional futurist, I would like to offer some thoughts about how these frontiers might move over the next five years. If these books were published, instead, in 2031, how would the contents likely differ from the actual chapters you have just finished reading? To what degree can the shape of future frontiers be extrapolated from seeing how the frontiers have altered in the past five years?

I go on to describe three scenarios for longevity science in 2031: Frail, Mediocre, and Abundant. I also review nine trends that could speed our collective travel toward the abundant longevity future:

1. More intelligence
2. Richer collaboration
3. Nimbler regulations
4. Finer tools
5. Better data
6. Higher integrity
7. Greater openness
8. Accelerated funding
9. Stronger moral clarity.

My presentation at the International Longevity Summit Madrid, 30th September and 1st October, will develop that analysis further.

That summit is poised to be a real landmark event. I hope to see many of you there!

7.) Future AI–AGI: Issues, Governance, Scenarios

By a kind of coincidence, another book has just become available in which my own contribution, again, provides the final bookend.

The book is produced by The Millennium Project and is entitled Future AI – AGI: Issues, Governance, and Scenarios. It contains the results of an extended three-phase study on the governance of the transition from Artificial Narrow (ANI) to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI):

• Phase 1 of the AGI study collected the views of 55 AGI leaders in the US, China, UK, the European Union, Canada, and Russia to 22 questions.
• Phase 2 of the AGI study details the requirements for Global Governance of Artificial General Intelligence — AGI. It is the result of a large Real-Time Delphi survey of 335 people from 65 countries and outlines 41 potential requirements for AGI global governance and five supranational governance models.
• Phase 3 of the AGI study has produced five alternative AGI scenarios out to 2035.

Here are the authors and titles of the five alternative scenarios:

1. Humanity Gets Lucky, by Jerome C. Glenn
2. ASI Awakens: Vision of a Beneficial, Decentralized Singularity, by Ben Goertzel
3. Robotto-san becomes Prime Minister: Democratized ASI is born, by José Cordeiro
4. The Role of the UN for AGI Governance, by Mariana Todorova
5. Too Little, too Late, by David Wood

All five scenarios are thought-provoking. But I confess I’m biased, and I think my own contribution is the most realistic one:

• This scenario reviews a series of governance failures – past, present, and future – that caused many important warnings to be ignored, culminating in global catastrophe.

But to be clear, my scenario is intended as a self-unfulfilling prophecy. Humanity’s actions don’t need to be too little or too late.

8.) Beyond rearranging the deck chairs

Evidently, although we humans have many tendencies to look away from challenging realities, or to immerse ourselves in warm-feeling distractions, we also have many marvelous tendencies. Identifying and strengthening these positive attributes is a core purpose of the technoprogressive movement, many of whose leading spokespeople are gathering in London on 19th and 20th September for the event “The Technoprogressive Opportunity: The future of ethics and emerging technologies”.

We’ll be joined by speakers who wouldn’t necessarily want to describe themselves as technoprogressives, but who have important messages that need to be heard, concerning the relationships between technologies, institutions, governance, narratives, and culture.

The set of confirmed speakers continues to grow.

Together, we can help each other to see more clearly, to decide more wisely, and to act more decisively – before any of the metaphorical icebergs strike.

I encourage you to click on this link to find out more details, and to register to attend in person.

// David W. Wood – Chair, London Futurists