AI in Strategic Foresight 2025

Introduction Strategic foresight – the disciplined exploration of possible futures to inform present-day decision- making – has long served as a cornerstone for resilience and long-term governance. Effective foresight requires challenging existing mental frames and cognitive biases, and cultivating openness, imagination and creativity to see beyond the immediate and the familiar. It is grounded in the present, yet anchored in an understanding of the past, connecting historical insight to forward-looking analysis. Foresight enables governments, businesses and societies to identify emerging opportunities and risks, and to make more adaptive choices that boost resilience in an increasingly complex and uncertain world. At the World Economic Forum, the Strategic Foresight team convenes the Global Foresight Network,1 a community of practice across public and private sectors that serves as an incubator to accelerate and advance the practice of foresight and future-preparedness. At the OECD, the Strategic Foresight Unit champions the OECD Government Foresight Community (GFC),2 which brings together public sector strategic foresight practitioners and exchanges information on the latest foresight developments in government for better policy- making. Together the Forum and OECD have been assessing the impact AI will have on the practice of foresight, recognizing that, as AI becomes one of the most transformative forces of the 21st century, it has the potential to fundamentally reshape foresight adoption and methodology. The intersection of AI and foresight offers both opportunity and challenge – the potential to democratize access to anticipatory tools that were once resource-intensive and institutionally bound, and the risk of distorting or over-automating the very processes it enhances. AI can broaden participation by augmenting analytical capacity, pattern recognition and scenario generation, empowering more actors to explore and prepare for alternative futures. Yet, these same tools can also introduce new dependencies, amplify biases and accelerate short-term decision-making at the expense of deep reflection. AI is transforming economies, governments and societies with unprecedented speed.3 It is reshaping how value is created, policies are designed and services are delivered. From the OECD’s perspective, the public sector has a unique opportunity to embed AI within the policy cycle, using real-time data and feedback to strengthen foresight, accountability and evidence-based decision-making. The OECD’s 2025 Governing with AI report and its Framework for Trustworthy AI in Government underscore that trustworthy deployment relies on three pillars – enablers, guardrails and engagement – aligning with OECD AI Principles4 on human-centred, inclusive growth. Objective The same dynamism that fuels AI’s promise makes foresight indispensable to its governance. Both the OECD and the Forum recognize that responsible AI requires anticipatory capacity – strategic foresight helps address the Collingridge dilemma by encouraging public bodies and firms alike to experiment, prototype and scenario-plan for shifting technological, social and geopolitical contexts. Public institutions need to build anticipatory capacity to prepare for how AI will reshape their functions and the nature of policy itself.5 In parallel, businesses must embed strategic foresight, accountability and transparency into every layer of their AI strategy and operations. This means aligning responsible AI with core business goals, establishing empowered governance and risk frameworks, and ensuring trustworthy data, ethical design and workforce literacy. In doing so, companies can innovate confidently while safeguarding trust, resilience and long-term value creation. As such, the purpose of this paper is to conduct a first assessment of how the foresight field itself is being transformed by AI. To understand this evolution, the OECD and the World Economic Forum have explored how AI is being integrated into foresight practices across public, private, academic and civil society domains. In mid-2025, a global survey of 167 foresight experts from 55 countries – drawn from the OECD Government Foresight Community, the Forum’s Global Foresight Network, and the Dubai Future Foundation network – revealed that two-thirds of practitioners already use AI in their work. The findings that follow provide an early empirical view of how AI is reshaping foresight methodologies, accessibility and the broader ecosystem of anticipatory governance.AI is reshaping the world of anticipatory governance. AI in Strategic Foresight: Reshaping Anticipatory Governance 5