AI in Strategic Foresight 2025

The biggest challenges in integrating AI into strategic foresight are related to ethical or governance concerns, lack of technical expertise and difficulty in aligning AI with human-centred foresight (Figure 4). Technical expertise is, unsurprisingly, less of a barrier for those who have already used AI for strategic foresight (Figure 5), but keeping up with the best tools available was reported as a challenge across the board. Resistance from leadership or stakeholders was reportedly faced mostly by public sector, civil society and academia members; this is reportedly not an issue for the private sector respondents who participated in the survey. Additional challenges reported by strategic foresight experts (both who use and do not use AI already) were related to the unreliability of AI outputs: their quality and tendencies towards hallucinations, lack of transparency, language and other biases, and noise. Moreover, in many cases AI was reported to have limited capacity for inductive reasoning. Because AI systems are built upon only existing knowledge, they struggle to identify forward-looking perspectives, unknown/low probability signals and potential disruptions, all of which are necessary for strategic foresight. Furthermore, especially in the public sector context, data security concerns and government silos were listed as barriers. To improve the quality of outputs, more intentionality and tailoring in both use and tools was seen as necessary. However, strategic foresight experts also reported a lack of resources and time for necessary experimentation.3.1 Reported challenges Challenges to integrating AI into foresight practices FIGURE 4 Which of the following challenges do you face in integrating AI into foresight? 0%10%60%80% 70% 20%30%40%50% Lack of technical expertise Ethical or governance concernsResistance from leadership or stakeholdersDifficulty aligning AI outputs with human-centred foresightLimited access to relevant dataOther Private sector Public sector Civil society Academia47% 45% 33%29%53% 51% 25% 11%25% 14%67% 35%42%43% 40% 32% 21% 20%33% 21%42% 42% 29% Source: OECDIn conclusion, the survey results clearly show that AI is perceived as a powerful tool for enhancing the efficiency, speed and scope of strategic foresight. While it is not yet seen as a replacement for human expertise – with several respondents noting the need for “checking legitimacy” and expert analysis – it is widely viewed as a valuable partner that handles the heavy-lifting of data processing and initial drafts, freeing up human practitioners for higher-level analysis, interpretation and critical thinking.