The future is bigger. Understand why.

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What If the Next AI Breakthrough Was a Chip That Calculates With Light?

The extraordinary possibility is a new division of labour: electronics handle some jobs, while light handles calculations that suit its physics.

02 / COMPUTING + BRAIN-INSPIRED HARDWARE5 MIN ↗

1.15 BILLION

What If a Computer Did Most of Its Work Only When Something Changed?

If the approach proves practical, some machines could become better at staying alert without continuously doing unnecessary work.

03 / COMPUTING + MOLECULAR STORAGE5 MIN ↗

DNA

What If Tomorrow’s Digital Archive Was Written Into DNA?

The bigger possibility is a different kind of long-term archive, where information rests in molecules instead of continuously operating equipment.

04 / QUANTUM SENSING + INFRASTRUCTURE5 MIN ↗

1 METRE

What If We Could Find What Is Buried Beneath a Street by Measuring Gravity?

The possibility is a new layer of underground knowledge that helps engineers decide where to investigate before they dig.

05 / QUANTUM SENSING + NEUROLOGICAL MEDICINE5 MIN ↗

7 PATIENTS

What If a Brain Scanner Could Fit Around a Child’s Head Like a Helmet?

The possibility is a more adaptable clinical instrument—not a helmet that reads private thoughts or cures epilepsy.

06 / MATERIALS SCIENCE + WATER5 MIN ↗

285 g

What If Your Next Glass of Water Came From the Air Above a Desert?

The extraordinary possibility is a supplementary water source for difficult locations, if output, durability and cost become practical.

07 / WATER ENGINEERING + URBAN RESILIENCE5 MIN ↗

WATER, AGAIN

What If a City’s Most Dependable New Water Source Was Water It Had Already Used?

The extraordinary possibility is a water system designed around repeated use, with safety and public confidence built into its operation.

08 / GEOTHERMAL ENERGY + INDUSTRIAL REINVENTION5 MIN ↗

3.5 MW

What If the Skills That Found Oil Helped Build Power Plants That Do Not Burn It?

The surprising industrial consequence is that some expertise from the fossil-fuel economy could help build another kind of energy infrastructure.

09 / THERMAL STORAGE + INDUSTRIAL ENERGY5 MIN ↗

2 MWh

What If a Factory Stored Cheap Electricity in a Room Full of Hot Bricks?

The extraordinary possibility is to separate the time a factory buys electricity from the time it needs useful heat.

10 / ELECTROCHEMISTRY + HEAVY INDUSTRY5 MIN ↗

1,600°C

What If Making New Steel Released Oxygen Instead of Carbon Dioxide?

The extraordinary possibility is to change a foundational manufacturing reaction, while recognizing that electricity and the rest of the supply chain still have environmental impacts.

11 / ELECTROCHEMISTRY + CONSTRUCTION5 MIN ↗

A DIFFERENT REACTION

What If We Could Make Cement Without Cooking Rock in a Giant Furnace?

The extraordinary possibility is to change how the material is made while letting builders keep working with familiar construction methods.

12 / BIOTECHNOLOGY + MOLECULAR RECYCLING5 MIN ↗

90% IN 10 HOURS

What If an Enzyme Could Take a Plastic Bottle Back to Its Original Ingredients?

The extraordinary possibility is recycling that rebuilds a suitable plastic from its ingredients, provided the complete process works economically.

13 / SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY + CRITICAL MINERALS5 MIN ↗

242 GENES

What If the Next Rare-Earth Processing Breakthrough Came From a Bacterium?

The extraordinary possibility is a new biological tool inside a mineral supply chain, rather than a claim that microbes make mining unnecessary.

14 / FUNGAL MATERIALS + MANUFACTURING5 MIN ↗

1,000+ SHEETS

What If a Material Factory Harvested Sheets Instead of Pouring Plastic?

The extraordinary possibility is a factory where biology helps build the structure of a product, not merely an ingredient that gets mixed into it.

15 / PROGRAMMABLE MATERIALS + 4D PRINTING5 MIN ↗

What If a Printed Object Came With Its Future Shape Built In?

The extraordinary possibility is to manufacture an object’s response over time, as well as its initial geometry.

16 / FOCUSED ULTRASOUND + DRUG DELIVERY5 MIN ↗

3 PEOPLE

What If Sound Could Open a Temporary Door for Medicine to Reach the Brain?

The extraordinary possibility is a better delivery route for selected therapies, if safety and meaningful patient benefits are established.

17 / MICROBIOME SCIENCE + CLINICAL MEDICINE5 MIN ↗

12.4% vs 39.8%

What If a Medicine Worked by Restoring an Ecosystem Inside Your Body?

The extraordinary possibility is a branch of medicine that manages a biological ecosystem, with evidence required separately for each proposed treatment.

18 / ORGANS ON CHIPS + DRUG DEVELOPMENT5 MIN ↗

27 DRUGS

What If a New Drug Met Living Human Tissue Before It Met a Patient?

The extraordinary possibility is better evidence earlier in development, while recognizing that a model remains a selective representation of a human body.

19 / GENOMICS + PERSONALIZED IMMUNOTHERAPY5 MIN ↗

8 OF 16

What If a Cancer Vaccine Was Designed From the Tumour It Needed to Fight?

The extraordinary possibility is a treatment designed around a particular cancer’s identity, with larger trials needed to determine its clinical value.

20 / CRYOPRESERVATION + TRANSPLANTATION5 MIN ↗

100 DAYS

What If a Donated Organ Could Wait for the Right Patient Instead of Racing a Clock?

The extraordinary possibility is organ banking for people, if the method can be made safe and dependable at human scale.

21 / FOOD PRODUCTION + ENERGY5 MIN ↗

PROTEIN FROM GASES

What If a Protein Factory Needed Electricity and Gases Instead of a Field?

The bigger possibility is a new connection between food security and clean electricity—if production becomes affordable and dependable.

22 / AGRICULTURE + BIOLOGICAL NITROGEN FIXATION5 MIN ↗

21 kg/ha

What If Microbes Could Deliver Some of a Crop’s Nitrogen From the Air?

The opportunity is partial replacement of fertilizer, with results that must hold up across actual farms.

23 / OCEAN EXPLORATION + AUTONOMOUS SURVEYING5 MIN ↗

28.7%

What If Robots Helped Us Map the Vast Part of Earth We Still Have Not Measured in Detail?

The opportunity is better knowledge for science and practical decisions, with a huge surveying task still ahead.

24 / SPACE INFRASTRUCTURE + SATELLITE SERVICING5 MIN ↗

5 MORE YEARS

What If a Satellite Could Gain More Working Years From a Visitor in Orbit?

The larger opportunity is to build space infrastructure that can be maintained, with each additional service still needing its own proof.

25 / COMPUTING + ELECTRICITY SYSTEMS5 MIN ↗

TIME + PLACE

What If a Computing Job Could Choose Its Time and Place to Use Cleaner Electricity?

The opportunity is to make useful flexibility part of computing design, while measuring the actual effect on energy and emissions.

26 / BIOLOGY + ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE7 MIN ↗

200 MILLION+

What if we could design medicines for diseases we can't treat today?

We are beginning to move from searching for useful molecules to designing biological tools for particular targets. That could change how the search for new treatments begins.

27 / ENERGY + ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE7 MIN ↗

93%

What if AI could invent the batteries that power its own future?

Battery costs are falling, electricity demand is growing, and artificial intelligence could help discover better materials. The surprising story is how these revolutions could begin reinforcing one another.

28 / AGRICULTURE + ROBOTICS7 MIN ↗

5 MILLION

What if a farm could think, see and work around the clock?

Machines are beginning to distinguish crops from weeds, respond to conditions and handle specific jobs with much greater precision. The next question is what happens when they start working as connected teams.

29 / AI + MATERIAL SCIENCE7 MIN ↗

2.2 MILLION

What if AI could help discover materials that have never existed before?

The materials inside tomorrow’s batteries, buildings and computers may begin as patterns suggested by a machine—and proven, or disproven, in a laboratory.

30 / GENOMICS + MEDICINE7 MIN ↗

100,000×+

What happens when reading our genetic code becomes dramatically cheaper?

A once monumental scientific achievement has become a far more accessible laboratory process. The next challenge is learning what the information really means.

31 / AI + ECONOMICS7 MIN ↗

280×

What happens when useful artificial intelligence gets hundreds of times cheaper?

AI is not only becoming more capable. At comparable measured performance, the price of using it has sometimes collapsed extraordinarily fast.

32 / ENERGY + ECONOMICS7 MIN ↗

90%

What happens when sunlight becomes one of our most economical power sources?

A technology once dismissed as too expensive has experienced a dramatic cost transformation—and is changing the questions utilities and businesses ask.

33 / AI + ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE7 MIN ↗

945 TWh

What if the future of AI is decided by the electricity grid?

The next major limit on digital progress might be a power connection, a transformer or a substation—not the cleverness of a computer model.

34 / AUTONOMOUS MOBILITY7 MIN ↗

400,000+

What changes when the driverless car stops being science fiction?

Autonomous vehicles are already carrying paying passengers at commercial scale in selected cities. The next challenge is making the experience safe, useful and widely available.

35 / ROBOTICS + MANUFACTURING7 MIN ↗

4.66 MILLION

What happens when millions of robots become part of everyday industry?

The factory robot is no longer an unusual experiment. Millions already work inside industrial operations, and AI is beginning to change what machines can do.

36 / AI + WEATHER + CLIMATE7 MIN ↗

1,000×

What if weather forecasts became dramatically faster to produce?

Weather forecasting has entered a new era in which AI models work alongside traditional physics-based systems—and speed can change who gets useful information in time.

37 / CONNECTIVITY + HUMAN OPPORTUNITY7 MIN ↗

6 BILLION

What happens when six billion people can connect to the digital world?

The internet has reached an extraordinary human scale. The next challenge is turning connection into meaningful opportunity—and reaching those still excluded.

38 / SUPERCOMPUTING + SCIENCE7 MIN ↗

1.809 EXAFLOPS

What becomes possible when a computer performs a quintillion calculations a second?

Extreme supercomputers let scientists explore physical systems at scales once beyond practical reach. The important story is what researchers can learn, not merely the machine’s speed.

39 / QUANTUM SCIENCE7 MIN ↗

ERRORS HALVED

What if quantum computers could finally learn to correct their mistakes?

The promise of quantum computing has been limited by fragile information. A demonstrated advance in error correction shows why reliability—not headline speed—is the breakthrough to watch.

40 / GLOBAL NETWORKS + INFRASTRUCTURE7 MIN ↗

45,000 KM

What if the future of the internet depends on cables laid across the ocean floor?

Everyday digital life depends on enormous physical networks most of us never see. One new African-centered cable system reveals their astonishing scale.

41 / MEDICINE + GENE EDITING7 MIN ↗

2023

What if scientists could repair the genes that cause disease?

For a small but growing number of serious inherited conditions, medicine is beginning to work on the biological instructions behind the illness—not only its symptoms.

42 / HEALTH + GENOMICS7 MIN ↗

4.7 YEARS

What if rare diseases could be diagnosed before families spend years searching?

The most life-changing medical breakthrough isn’t always a cure. Sometimes it’s finally learning what is wrong—and what can be done next.

43 / HEALTH + DIAGNOSTICS8 MIN ↗

54%

What if a clinic far from a major hospital could run advanced medical tests?

A medical breakthrough is useful only if the people who need it can reach it. Smaller testing equipment could bring some sophisticated diagnoses closer to home.

44 / HEALTH + PREDICTIVE CARE7 MIN ↗

3 weeks

What if hospitals could prepare for an emergency-room surge before it happens?

The extraordinary possibility is not predicting who will fall ill. It is giving hospital teams time to prepare for the crowds, beds and staff they are likely to need.

45 / HEALTH + EARLY WARNING9 MIN ↗

1,258 sites

What if the first warning of an outbreak came from the water beneath our streets?

Sometimes a community can see signs of a spreading infection before enough people have reached a doctor to reveal the pattern.

46 / BIOLOGY + THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING7 MIN ↗

1982

What if we could grow valuable ingredients instead of making them in a factory?

Biology already manufactures some of our most important medicines. Now scientists and companies are exploring whether carefully controlled microbes can make many other useful ingredients, too.

47 / AGRICULTURE + FOOD9 MIN ↗

200+ varieties

What if we could design crops for the climate they will actually face?

Farmers are already planting varieties bred for drought and heat. Genomics and better breeding tools could make tomorrow’s crops more resilient without pretending that genetics can control the weather.

48 / AGRICULTURE + LAND9 MIN ↗

1.4 billion hectares

What if every field could tell us when its soil was losing its health?

The ground beneath a crop is a living, changing system. Better measurements could help farmers spot problems before the harvest reveals the damage.

49 / MANUFACTURING + PERSONALIZATION7 MIN ↗

100+

What if a factory could make one perfect product for one person?

For more than a century, factories became successful by making identical things cheaply. Now some are learning to make different things efficiently.

50 / INDUSTRY + PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE7 MIN ↗

$119 BILLION

What if every machine could warn us before it breaks?

Instead of waiting for a factory motor to fail, we can increasingly listen for the tiny changes that reveal trouble before work stops.

51 / ROBOTICS + PEOPLE7 MIN ↗

10.5%

What if people and robots could work together more safely?

The industrial robot used to work behind a fence. Newer machines are being designed for a more complicated task: sharing space with people.

52 / ENERGY + COMMUNITY RESILIENCE7 MIN ↗

10,000

What if your town could keep the lights on when the grid goes down?

A small community can sometimes become its own temporary power system—and that could change what resilience means during an emergency.

53 / ENERGY + VIRTUAL POWER PLANTS7 MIN ↗

33 GIGAWATTS

What if millions of small energy devices became one giant power plant?

Your home battery, an electric car and a smart thermostat might one day contribute to the electricity system as a coordinated team—even though they sit in different places.

54 / ENERGY + ELECTRIC VEHICLES7 MIN ↗

2 directions

What if parked electric cars could help keep a neighborhood powered?

An electric car is already a large rechargeable battery on wheels. With the right equipment, rules and incentives, some of that stored electricity could become useful beyond the vehicle itself.

55 / ENERGY + STORAGE9 MIN ↗

100 hours

What if we could store electricity not just for an evening—but for days?

The next storage challenge is not merely a cheaper battery. It is keeping power available through long stretches when wind, sunlight or the grid cannot meet demand.

56 / SCIENCE + AUTONOMOUS DISCOVERY7 MIN ↗

17 DAYS

What if a laboratory could keep discovering while its researchers slept?

Some experiments can now be planned, carried out and evaluated by connected computers and robotic equipment—turning scientific investigation into a more continuous process.

57 / AI + PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE9 MIN ↗

Up to 40%

What if the next great computer breakthrough came from keeping chips cool?

AI demands enormous computing power, but every calculation creates heat. New cooling materials and designs may decide how much useful intelligence our infrastructure can deliver.

58 / MANUFACTURING + DIGITAL TWINS7 MIN ↗

30%

What if we could test an entire factory before building the real one?

The emerging power of digital replicas is that expensive physical decisions can increasingly be explored, compared and corrected in a virtual environment before anyone moves machinery.

59 / ROBOTICS + COORDINATION7 MIN ↗

1 MILLION

What if a fleet of robots learned to work as one team?

The most important improvement in a warehouse may not be a smarter robot. It may be software that helps hundreds of machines avoid getting in one another’s way.

60 / LOGISTICS + INTELLIGENCE9 MIN ↗

100 million miles

What if an entire delivery fleet could think about its routes together?

One truck saving a few miles seems insignificant. Across thousands of deliveries, better decisions can remove extraordinary amounts of wasted travel.

61 / CLIMATE + EVERYDAY LIFE9 MIN ↗

1–7°F hotter

What if your street could warn you that the heat is becoming dangerous?

One city can contain very different temperatures. New maps and sensors could help communities recognize where extreme heat is most threatening—and act before people are hurt.

62 / CLIMATE + WILDFIRE INTELLIGENCE7 MIN ↗

3 hours

What if fire crews could see a wildfire warning from space?

Satellites already provide rapid information about active fire and heat. Combine those observations with weather, terrain and human expertise, and responders may gain more time to make difficult decisions.

63 / WATER + INFRASTRUCTURE9 MIN ↗

32 billion m³

What if a city could find a water leak before anyone sees a puddle?

An invisible leak under a road can waste treated water for months. Better pressure sensing and network analysis could help utilities discover problems sooner.

64 / INFRASTRUCTURE + SENSORS7 MIN ↗

6.8%

What if bridges could tell engineers when something is beginning to go wrong?

Roads and bridges are usually inspected on a schedule. Sensors, better records and intelligent analysis could add a more continuous picture of how critical infrastructure is actually behaving.

65 / CITIES + STORMS9 MIN ↗

27,154 gallons

What if a city could prepare its drains before the storm arrives?

Intelligent stormwater systems could use forecasts, sensors and carefully controlled infrastructure to create room for heavy rain before streets begin to flood.

66 / BUILDINGS + ENERGY9 MIN ↗

75%

What if your building knew when electricity was worth using—and when it was worth waiting?

Buildings could increasingly adjust heating, cooling, charging and storage to the changing conditions of the electricity system, without forcing occupants to manage every decision.

67 / EDUCATION + LEARNING7 MIN ↗

70%

What if every student could ask a patient tutor a thousand questions?

Intelligent tutoring could make extra explanations and practice available at almost any hour, in languages and learning styles that many classrooms cannot individually provide to every student.

68 / SAFETY + IMMERSIVE TRAINING7 MIN ↗

5,070

What if workers could practise a dangerous job without facing the danger first?

Virtual reality could let trainees make some mistakes safely, repeat difficult scenarios and arrive at real equipment better prepared—without replacing supervised field experience.

69 / AI + LANGUAGE + ACCESSIBILITY9 MIN ↗

≈7,000

What if nobody had to miss out because they spoke a different language?

Translation, captioning and accessible communication could help millions of people participate more fully in healthcare, education and everyday public life—but understanding words is only the beginning.

70 / SMALL BUSINESS + SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE7 MIN ↗

40 million+

What if a small company could investigate an idea like a much larger organization?

Open research, affordable computing and better scientific tools could help smaller teams ask deeper questions before they invest heavily—but evidence and real experiments still matter.

71 / FINANCE + TRUST8 MIN ↗

$12.5B

What if banks could interrupt fraud while a crime is still unfolding?

A faster payment system should not mean criminals get a faster escape route. Banks are learning to recognize suspicious patterns while a transaction is still happening.

72 / ROBOTICS + ENERGY + MAINTENANCE9 MIN ↗

Inside the blade

What if a wind turbine could call a robot for help?

Crawling inspection robots and intelligent monitoring could eventually spot small problems high above the ground before they turn into costly failures.

73 / FUSION + AI + SCIENCE9 MIN ↗

19 coils

What if AI could help scientists control the energy of the stars?

Artificial intelligence has controlled intricate patterns of superheated plasma inside experimental fusion machines, offering scientists new ways to test what a future energy source might require.

74 / MEDICINE + PRECISION8 MIN ↗

What if surgeons could rehearse an operation on a model before performing it?

The first time a surgical team explores a difficult patient’s anatomy need not be in the operating room. Scans and three-dimensional models can help make the unfamiliar more understandable.

75 / CONSTRUCTION + ROBOTICS + SAFETY9 MIN ↗

389 lives

What if a construction site could understand what was happening across it?

As equipment, schedules, designs and sensors become connected, construction teams could catch conflicts earlier and coordinate dangerous work more safely—if the information is useful and trusted.

76 / ON-DEVICE AI + EVERYDAY LIFE8 MIN ↗

20 billion

What if powerful, useful AI lived in your pocket instead of far away in the cloud?

An increasingly capable phone can do some intelligent tasks without sending every question to a distant data center. That could change speed, privacy and who gets access.

77 / AI RELIABILITY + HUMAN JUDGMENT8 MIN ↗

66.3%

What if a computer sounds brilliant but still fails when a task gets complicated?

AI can answer difficult questions and still make surprising mistakes while trying to complete a sequence of ordinary actions. Reliability—not eloquence—is the challenge.

78 / AI ECONOMY + OPPORTUNITY8 MIN ↗

88%

What if almost every company gets AI—but the benefits still go to only a few?

Access to useful intelligence is becoming widespread. Turning that access into better jobs, fairer opportunity and stronger businesses is a much harder challenge.

79 / INNOVATION + SPEED8 MIN ↗

0.7%

What if a business could turn an idea into a tested result in days instead of months?

The most valuable use of AI might be accelerating the cycle from question to experiment to evidence, rather than simply producing more ideas.

80 / THE MATHEMATICS OF ACCELERATION8 MIN ↗

1,024×

What happens when something doubles ten times and becomes more than a thousand times bigger?

We are good at imagining a steady increase. We are much less comfortable with repeated doubling—and that makes some technological changes easy to underestimate.

81 / HOW TECHNOLOGY BECOMES EVERYDAY LIFE8 MIN ↗

53%

Why do extraordinary inventions take years to become ordinary?

A breakthrough can happen in a laboratory or on a stage. Changing daily life requires something much harder: making the technology useful, affordable, dependable and widely available.

82 / COST COLLAPSE + BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION8 MIN ↗

91%

What if the most disruptive thing about technology is that it keeps getting cheaper?

An invention can be remarkable at any price. But when it becomes affordable, entire markets—and the assumptions behind them—can change.

83 / FUTURE LITERACY + EVIDENCE8 MIN ↗

+30 points

How can you tell a genuine technological breakthrough from hype?

Extraordinary claims deserve curiosity—and a method. The skill is learning which questions separate a convincing demonstration from a durable change in the real world.

84 / AI + EFFICIENCY7 MIN ↗

0.75%

What if the next big AI breakthrough were a much smaller machine?

For some useful tasks, the most important advance may be doing enough with far less memory, electricity and expensive computing—not building the largest possible model.

85 / COMPUTE + PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE8 MIN ↗

20%

What if the biggest bottleneck in artificial intelligence is no longer the computer chip?

The future of AI depends on a hidden industrial system: electricity, cooling, memory, factory capacity, specialized packaging and the physical networks that connect everything.

86 / DATA + DIGITAL WORLD8 MIN ↗

175 ZB

What if the planet were creating more data than it can possibly understand?

The extraordinary problem is no longer merely capturing information. It is finding what matters amid a swelling ocean of images, measurements and digital activity.

87 / CONNECTIVITY + INCLUSION8 MIN ↗

2.2 billion

What if affordable internet reached people still left out of the digital economy?

A connection can open doors to education, work, healthcare and markets. But being within range of a network is not the same as having meaningful access.

88 / SATELLITES + COMMUNICATIONS + ACCESS9 MIN ↗

650+ satellites

What if your phone still worked when the cell towers disappeared?

Satellites are beginning to connect with ordinary mobile phones in places beyond terrestrial coverage, opening a potentially important new layer of communication for remote communities and emergencies.

89 / ENERGY + THE FUTURE OF THE GRID7 MIN ↗

330 GW

What if the electricity grid became intelligent enough to use more of what it already has?

A power line doesn’t always have the same safe carrying capacity. Better sensors, smarter controls and carefully tested AI can help operators see the difference.

90 / TRANSPORT + INDUSTRY8 MIN ↗

20 million+

What if the electric-car revolution changed factories, jobs and electricity at once?

The electric vehicle is more than a car with a different motor. It is changing how products are built, where value is created and how transportation meets the power grid.

91 / AI + SAFETY8 MIN ↗

1,600+

What if the safety of intelligent systems mattered more than how clever they are?

A system can be impressive in a demonstration and still be unfit to control a real-world decision. The next important AI skill may be knowing when a machine should stop.

92 / BIOLOGY + HUMAN HEALTH8 MIN ↗

What if scientists could map the human body one cell at a time?

Our bodies contain extraordinary varieties of cells, and researchers are beginning to discover how their locations, states and relationships change during health and disease.

93 / SCIENCE + DISCOVERY8 MIN ↗

36 of 57

What if the real breakthrough comes when another laboratory proves it works?

An extraordinary scientific result is the start of a claim, not the end of the story. Independent testing is how promising ideas become dependable knowledge.

94 / WORK + OPPORTUNITY8 MIN ↗

1 in 4

What if technology changed some jobs—and created careers we cannot yet name?

Work is made of tasks, skills and human relationships. When machines gain new capabilities, the way people create value can change even when a job title stays the same.

95 / THE YOTTABIT ERA8 MIN ↗

10²⁴

What is a Yottabit—and why does a number this large matter?

One septillion bits. But the real Yottabit story is not a claim about today’s network speed. It is a new way to think about the scale of technological possibility.

2036 FUTURE SCENARIO / 019 MIN ↗

Robotics + Artificial Intelligence

What if one robot learned a skill—and thousands of others could use it tomorrow?

A robot's most valuable feature might eventually be something you can teach it once, improve through experience, and distribute to an entire fleet.

2036 FUTURE SCENARIO / 029 MIN ↗

Artificial Intelligence + Commerce + Networks

What happens when software stops answering questions and starts running parts of the economy?

Your next important business transaction may be negotiated by two pieces of software—each acting for a different person or organization.

2036 FUTURE SCENARIO / 039 MIN ↗

Identity + Digital Trust + Artificial Intelligence

What happens when a digital identity can be created in minutes—and a machine can act behind it?

In a world filled with convincing synthetic people and independent software agents, trust may depend less on how someone looks or sounds—and more on whether we can prove who authorized an action.

2036 FUTURE SCENARIO / 048 MIN ↗

Ambient Intelligence + Connected Environments

What if the most powerful computer in your life was the world around you?

Instead of constantly reaching for a computer to tell it what we need, our surroundings could increasingly understand situations and help us—provided we remain in control of what they know and do.

2036 FUTURE SCENARIO / 058 MIN ↗

Brain Interfaces + AI + Human Communication

What if people who cannot speak could communicate almost as fast as they think?

A medical device could translate attempted speech into a natural-sounding voice, returning not just words but some of the spontaneity, personality and participation that serious illness can take away.

2036 FUTURE SCENARIO / 068 MIN ↗

Longevity + Preventive Medicine + Society

What if 90 became an age of independence rather than decline?

A better future of aging might not mean living forever. It might mean arriving at 90 with more years of strength, choice and independence than earlier generations expected.

2036 FUTURE SCENARIO / 077 MIN ↗

Circular Materials + Robotics + Supply Chains

What if the raw materials in a product became more valuable than the product itself?

Tomorrow's most valuable mine may be the mountain of electronics, batteries and industrial equipment we've already manufactured.

2036 FUTURE SCENARIO / 088 MIN ↗

Carbon Mineralization + Construction + Climate

What if the next generation of buildings stored carbon instead of only emitting it?

The walls, blocks and foundations we build could sometimes become places where captured carbon dioxide is locked into stable minerals for decades or longer.

2036 FUTURE SCENARIO / 097 MIN ↗

Sensing + Advanced Materials + Infrastructure

What if bridges and buildings could detect damage—and begin repairing themselves?

Some structures could become better at telling us when they are deteriorating—and certain materials could close small cracks before water and corrosion cause much more serious damage.

2036 FUTURE SCENARIO / 108 MIN ↗

Early Detection + Preventive Medicine + AI

What if your most important medical appointment happened before you felt ill?

Healthcare could eventually become better at identifying specific problems early enough to prevent some of the harm they cause—without turning every healthy person into a patient.

2036 FUTURE SCENARIO / 118 MIN ↗

Predictive Risk + Sensors + Insurance Reinvention

What if your insurance company made more money preventing a disaster than paying for it?

Insurance could evolve from a promise to pay after a loss into a service that helps people stop selected losses before they happen.

2036 FUTURE SCENARIO / 128 MIN ↗

Automated Buying + Retail + Customer Relationships

What if the biggest customer of your business was someone else's AI?

Your next customer might never browse your website, see your advertising or speak to a salesperson. Instead, a digital agent could compare what you sell, judge whether it meets a person's needs and place an authorized order.

2036 FUTURE SCENARIO / 137 MIN ↗

Urban Systems + Simulation + Infrastructure Resilience

What if a city could stop a chain reaction of failures before it starts?

A city could begin managing electricity, water, transportation and emergency services as parts of an interdependent system, spotting when one failure threatens to pull down several others.

2036 FUTURE SCENARIO / 147 MIN ↗

On-Demand Production + Digital Design + Supply Chains

What if a product didn't exist until somebody ordered it?

For more kinds of products, businesses could keep a digital design and the materials needed to make it instead of storing thousands of finished items that may never sell.

2036 FUTURE SCENARIO / 158 MIN ↗

Adaptive Design + Manufacturing + Supply Chains

What if your factory could redesign a product overnight when a supplier disappears?

Instead of waiting months for a missing component, a manufacturer could increasingly explore, test and qualify alternative ways of making a product using the materials and suppliers available.