AI in Strategic Foresight 2025

Perspectives on the future4 Foresight practitioners must ensure that AI does not undermine the field. As AI is developing rapidly and its impacts are difficult to assess holistically, a majority of strategic foresight experts surveyed said the risks connected with the technology were contextual and dependent on how AI is designed, governed and applied (Figure 7). Nevertheless, 19% of the respondents predicted moderate risks to the profession and 6% of respondents judged there to be a very high risk that AI will significantly undermine effective foresight practices. The proportions of these responses were largely the same for both those already using AI in their strategic foresight practice and those who were not doing so yet. As strategic foresight practitioners are also facing the Collingridge dilemma (not all risks associated with AI will be foreseeable before adoption at scale and the establishment of path dependencies that are hard to break), these risks should be taken seriously. With this in mind, anticipatory capacity is needed in the public sector in general, but also in the strategic foresight practice itself to tackle these risks as early as possible through experimentation and by following risk management practices.7 AI in Strategic Foresight: Reshaping Anticipatory Governance 15