On 16 January, the Agora project Stories of the Future will be presented at the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2024 in Davos, Switzerland. Artificial Intelligence will indeed be a central topic at the WEF this year.

Led by a team of researchers at the Geneva Graduate Institute's Hirschman Centre for Democracy, the Stories of the Future project aims to ask young people in Switzerland about the future of democracy and the role of technology, particularly AI. It is based on the idea that artificial intelligence is becoming very present in interactions between citizens and government, but that awareness of this subject is lacking, particularly among young people. 

With this in mind, the team has already conducted around fifty workshops in secondary schools and colleges in German-, Italian- and French-speaking Switzerland, during which young people are invited to explore and propose their vision of the future of democracy, and the role they would like AI to play in it. In Geneva, workshops have taken place at the Collège Sismondi, the École de commerce Nicolas-Bouvier, the Collège et école de commerce Émilie-Gourd, and the College Calvin.

Around a hundred stories have already been written, some of them reinterpreted by students from art schools including the Zurich University of the Arts.

In Davos, interactive posters prepared by students from the Zurich University of the Arts will be displayed every hour or so in the AI House of the WEF 2024, which will be the main venue for AI-related discussions in Davos. The posters will be displayed in a public exhibition in Zurich at the end of February.

A similar endeavour of reinterpretation will be undertaken by students from the HEAD - Geneva this spring, which will culminate in a public exhibition in Geneva.

Read about the Institute's broader activities on AI, including in Davos, HERE.