Welcome to Good Foresight

A Newsletter about Flourishing in the Age of AI

This is Good Foresight, a newsletter written by futurist John M. Smart about Seeing Ahead, Living our Best Selves, and Making a Better World in the Age of AI. I hope you find it valuable, in this time of amazing opportunity and challenge.

This is a complement to my book, Introduction to Foresight, 2022, on Personal, Team, and Organizational foresight, and to my free online guide to future thinking, ForesightGuide.com.

I am Co-Founder of the nonprofit Evo-Devo Institute (an international complexity research community), CEO of Foresight University (a foresight consultancy), VP of Aspirational Neuroscience (uploading research), and past president of the Acceleration Studies Foundation. I’ve designed and taught foresight courses in two universities, and I have government, defense, and corporate clients interested in adapting to accelerating change. I’m fascinated by the future, and all the ways we can gain a better world tomorrow with better vision and action today.

I’ve been writing and researching and running conferences on the future since 1999. I’m one of the “old guard” of singularity scholars, one who expects that biological humanity will increasingly merge with our learning machines. I believe asking how to protect human flourishing in an Age of AI, has become the Biggest Question of the current era. I have another Substack for AI designers and regulators, Natural Alignment, if you want more on the topic of biology-inspired AI alignment.

I’m a short-term realist, recognizing the deep dysfunctions of modern predatory capitalism, and of our still-growing global plutocracy, but I’m a long-term optimist, as I see the arc of accelerating change and progress, even with all of our self-created problems. I’ll talk about that arc, and current and coming advances, in my posts. I look forward to your comments, our discussions, and our friendship. I run book clubs, retreats, and events, and will periodically offer invitations to those in my posts. Perhaps I’ll see you in person at a physical or virtual event in coming months.

I’ll try to keep to a weekly schedule with my posts, starting now, in mid-2025, but I am blessed with young kids at home and so I make no promises with frequency today. My posts will range across six scanning categories: Science, Tech, Economics, Environment, Politics, and Society. These are the STEEPS categories. They are a minimum viable set for “full-spectrum” future thinking. So also are the KUVR assessments, the Knowns, Unknowns, Visions, and Risks (aka the Probable, Possible, Preferred, and Preventable futures), the four classic ways we look ahead, in any topic. Finally, we’ll discuss the future in six key domains, the Personal, Team, Organizational, Societal, Global, and Universal. The “Toss-Goo” (PTOSGU) domains. See my book, or ForesightGuide.com, if you want coaching on how to use these scanning categories, assessments, and thinking domains to create better visions, plans, and actions, in a world of accelerating change. Thanks!