Authors:
Scott Minneman, Renato Verdugo
Contributor: Jeremy Kirshbaum
Curators: Scott Minneman and Renato Verdugo
Turning static documents into evolving, interconnected elaborations of the original—that's the defining vision of WhatIFpedia (https://WhatIFpedia.com). The platform showcases how generative AI can be utilized to extrapolate from provided content and take it in directions that readers express interest in, while remaining loyal to the original content's topics and tone (not unlike fan fiction). Specifically, WhatIFpedia generates foresight provocations for the year 2035 in the form of real-looking Wikipedia pages, complete with convincing forecast descriptions, genre-appropriate headings, and working links to additional content. Powered by Anthropic's Claude 3.5 and utilizing proprietary mechanisms to feed just the right amount of existing content into subsequent results, the platform produces novel but consistent visions of 2035 that are mixed with a concise forecast from the skilled forecasting team at the Institute for the Future. Using the familiar online encyclopedia format, WhatIFpedia morphs the current single-user large language model consumption pattern into a collaborative experience, with an ever-growing body of intriguing, fun, and sometimes silly forecasts. The WhatIFpedia simulation database had already swollen to more than 1,300 entries when this column was written, but the results still felt fresh and didn't reek of AI. This project is just the beginning of utilizing AI's tendency to "hallucinate" as a creative feature, extending static document corpora in new directions.
Authors
This project was produced by Oakland, California-based Handshake, contracted by the Institute for the Future (IFTF), and inspired by Sawyer Hood's Wonkypedia. The core text that seeds WhatIFpedia content encapsulates IFTF's recent Ten-Year Forecast research. The project team recognized and demonstrated a new way to utilize generative AI: not to answer queries for individuals but to collectively imagine and develop new possibilities. Jeremy Kirshbaum, founder and CEO of Handshake, has worked as both a research director and an affiliate researcher at IFTF (where he and Scott first met). Find out more about Handshake's work at https://handshake.fyi.
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