Doing Life in an Uncertain World

The future is arriving faster than we can absorb it. But who has the freedom to live in it? During a recent brainstorming session, a colleague remarked that someone had used AI to complete a piece of work. Another replied, almost instinctively: “These days, who can do any work without AI?” 

The exchange stayed with me. Only a few years ago, we wrote reports, developed arguments and searched for the right words without a conversational machine beside us.  Now a polished answer can appear in seconds. Are we becoming better thinkers, or simply faster producers? And when did an optional tool become something we struggle to imagine working without?

In 2018, I spoke on a youth panel on the Fourth Industrial Revolution during a blockchain conference in Kampala, Uganda. In my preparations, I read Klaus Schwab’s The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Through the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Community, I was already interested in how technology could influence Africa’s development. But the book invited a different kind of reflection, specifically about possibilities, such as intelligent healthcare, connected devices and autonomous systems, all of which seemed both exciting and distant. I also spoke about AI governance and who would set the rules for technologies that might reshape our lives.

Eight years later, I glance at the WHOOP on my wrist, offering insights into my sleep and recovery. Recently, a Turkish colleague gave me my first ride in a Tesla. What an experience! It took me back to driving school in 2018, struggling to balance the clutch, brake, accelerator, and gears of a manual car. So much has changed in such a short time.

Neither a wearable nor a driver-assistance system eliminates the need for human judgment. Yet yesterday’s possibilities have become today’s habits. The governance questions remain unsettled, as the United Nations’ 2026 Global Dialogue on AI Governance makes clear.

When disruption enters the household

Technological change is only one source of uncertainty. Since the COVID-19 global pandemic, a succession of crises has made disruption feel almost routine: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the devastating war and continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and the 2026 conflict involving Iran. These are profoundly different events, above all human tragedies. But they also reveal how tightly our systems are connected.

Threats to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb can reverberate through fuel prices, freight costs and food markets thousands of kilometres away. Not every shock is an unforeseeable “X-event.” What matters is the way risks accumulate and cascade, turning a distant crisis into a decision at the kitchen table. Who pays when essentials become more expensive? Businesses and governments may absorb some costs, but families eventually face difficult trade-offs – often without comparable growth in their incomes. A young person postpones a course. A couple delays moving into a home. An entrepreneur abandons an investment. Economic volatility quietly narrows the space in which people can plan their lives. 

In Somalia, for example, families have long navigated uncertainty through enterprise, ingenuity and community networks. But adaptability should not become an excuse for expecting people to absorb endless shocks. A colleague recently told me he worried about having children in the age of AI. Would they find meaningful work in an economy where machines perform more of what humans do? His concern was not simply about technology. It was about whether he could confidently imagine a good life for the next generation.

In John Maynard Keynes’s 1930 essay, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, he imagined that productivity gains might one day allow people to work only fifteen hours a week. Nearly a century later, it is worth asking: Whose grandchildren have the freedom to enjoy that abundance – those growing up in prosperous economies, or those in Mogadishu, Gaza and communities where secure work, reliable electricity and social protection remain uneven?  Technological progress is real; its rewards are not automatically shared.

Foresight as a question of agency

For futurists, Sohail Inayatullah’s Futures Triangle is a tool that allows us to examine that gap. The push of the present includes accelerating AI, climate disruption, geopolitical conflict and rising living costs. The weight of the past includes historical inequality, fragile institutions and dependence on imported essentials. The pull of the future contains competing images: a society where technology expands human freedom, or one where efficiency grows alongside insecurity and exclusion.

The value of the Futures Triangle lies in what we do with these tensions. Imagine two plausible futures. In one, AI increases productivity, new skills are accessible and public institutions distribute opportunities more widely. In another, the same technology concentrates gains while shocks repeatedly erode household incomes. Neither future is inevitable. The difference depends on choices made now about education, governance, infrastructure and economic protection.

We can then stress-test practical decisions: Which skills strengthen judgment rather than dependence? What would help a household withstand another energy-price shock? Which policies would ensure that productivity gains create widely shared opportunities? And whose voices are absent when we decide what a “desirable future” looks like?

UNESCO’s work on futures literacy reminds us that imagining different futures can change how we act today. But imagination is not a substitute for decent incomes, reliable services or accountable institutions. The capacity to anticipate is not the same as the freedom to choose.

In Kampala in 2018, I was fascinated by what technology might make possible. Today, I am equally concerned with what people can actually make of their lives amid accelerating change. The future may be arriving for everyone, but not everyone has the same freedom to live in it, shape it or benefit from it.

This article was first published on APF

Mohamed Okash is a researcher and ecosystem builder specializing in social innovation, policy development, and institutional and human capital development. He employs strategic foresight to anticipate emerging challenges and craft transformative solutions for climate resilience and socioeconomic transformation in least-developed countries. As the founding director of the Institute of Climate and Environment (ICE) and a member of the Global Future Council on Nature and Climate at the World Economic Forum, Mr. Okash leads initiatives that shape sustainable and equitable futures.