Anticipating and managing emerging global transformations

While artificial intelligence (AI) is already widely used today, the long-term implications of rapidly advancing AI systems remain largely unknown. Governments need to anticipate potential impacts from future developments in AI and ensure that they are well positioned to capture potential benefits while managing potential risks. The OECD Expert Group on AI Futures provides insights into possible AI futures and supports governments with the knowledge and tools necessary to develop forward-looking AI policies.   

Future developments in biotechnology have the potential to aid in key societal challenges, from meeting healthcare needs to addressing the climate crisis. However, these developments can also induce risks, such as dual use risks from specific biotechnologies with potential for misuse. To ensure that benefits can be captured while risks are managed, governments need to foresee potential future developments and determine which policies are needed to achieve desirable biotechnology futures. The Strategic Foresight Unit is supporting the Secretariat for the Working Party on Biotechnology, Nanotechnology and Converging Technology (BNCT) to advance work on biotechnology futures to meet this need. 

The Strategic Foresight Unit supports the OECD’s broader work on emerging technology governance via the OECD’s Horizontal Project Going Digital on embedding human-centric values into the digital transformation (Phase IV). The project includes the development of a framework for and guidance on innovative emerging technology governance mechanisms. A core need for any effective approach to emerging technology governance is anticipation. The Strategic Foresight Unit helps address this need by providing expertise on strategic foresight to support the development of the framework and specific guidance on the use of foresight in emerging technology governance.

Governments have a responsibility to manage critical risks that threaten their societies and economies. Emerging risks pose a particular challenge for governments, as governments may lack data, established authorities and agreed management approaches for these risks. The Strategic Foresight Unit has supported the OECD’s High Level Risk Forum to develop a proactive and structured approach to understanding and addressing emerging critical risks, codified in the Framework on Managing Emerging Critical Risks. The implementation of this Framework is supported through a mapping exercise among national risk-management professionals to identify and assess emerging critical risks.  

Work to manage emerging global risks is often fundamentally transnational in nature. Risks such as those emerging from new technologies are rarely contained within one country. International regulatory co-operation is essential to effectively manage these risks. The OECD’s Regulatory Policy Division, with the support of the Strategic Foresight Unit, is mapping existing multilateral institutions and instruments dealing with global risks from emerging technologies and developing a guidance for international regulatory co-operation to manage these risks, identifying the successive steps for governments to adopt at the domestic and international levels to predict, react and rebuild in the face of these risks.   

Governments need increased capacity to effectively manage emerging global transformations. This requires identifying effective organizational forms, means of private sector collaboration, methods of prioritization and approaches to managing uncertainty to ensure governments have sufficient capacity to anticipate and manage potential transformative changes.