Global Foresight 2036: Forecasting with Artificial Intelligence

Why It Matters

The assessment links AI‑driven forecasting to real‑world risk management, helping decision‑makers allocate capital and shape policy amid uncertain geopolitical and technological futures.

Key Takeaways

• AI predicts 10‑20% chance of world war within decade.
• Taiwan Strait identified as primary flashpoint for potential conflict.
• Experts estimate AGI could emerge by 2036, but not certain.
• 2022‑2023 surveys place median AGI timeline between 2040‑2059.
• AGI confidence hinges on scalable breakthroughs in reasoning and generalization.

Summary

The video “Global Foresight 2036” uses ChatGPT to illustrate how artificial‑intelligence tools synthesize expert forecasts about two high‑impact scenarios: the likelihood of a major war in the next ten years and the arrival of artificial general intelligence by 2036.

Analysts surveyed by AI‑impact studies assign a 10‑20% probability to a world war, citing nuclear deterrence, trade interdependence and strong alliances as dampeners, while flagging the Taiwan Strait and a sudden Middle‑East escalation as the most plausible triggers. On the AGI front, the 2022 and 2023 AI‑impact surveys of roughly 700 researchers give a median 50% chance of achieving human‑level general intelligence between 2040 and 2059, with a modest shift toward earlier dates in recent polls.

The video quotes the surveys directly: “AGI systems that can perform at least as well as humans in most or all intellectual tasks.” It also highlights that ChatGPT’s answers are probabilistic aggregates rather than original foresight, underscoring the current limitation of AI to generate truly novel scenario analysis.

For investors and policymakers, the blended outlook signals heightened geopolitical risk that could affect supply chains and defense spending, while the uncertain AGI timeline suggests both opportunity for early‑stage AI ventures and the need for robust governance frameworks. Monitoring breakthrough metrics—reasoning, common‑sense, and cross‑domain learning—will be critical to gauge when speculative bets on AGI become actionable.

Original Description

Can ChatGPT predict the next world war?

Foreign policy and tech experts put AI chatbots through their paces, presenting them with questions from the Atlantic Council's annual Global Foresight survey of (human) strategists about what the world will look like by 2036. See how the bots performed, and whether the current generation of AI tools can help strategists and foresight practitioners prepare for an uncertain future.

For more on the future of AI and other predictions for the next decade, check out the full Global Foresight 2036 report: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/atlantic-council-strategy-paper-series/global-foresight-2036/

0:00 Intro: Our AI experts ask an LLM our Global Foresight 2036 survey questions

0:17 ChatGPT, will there be another world war in the next decade?

1:20 Will artificial general intelligence (AGI) be achieved by 2036?

1:41 Going deeper into the answer

3:24 What elements indicate we will achieve AGI by a certain date?

3:55 Is this just a probability model?

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