The Dangerous Power of Speculation

Being human involves making choices. Whenever we make a choice, it means that we could have made a different one. But which choice should we make? 

An ethical dilemma is what happens when there’s a conflict between these choices, where no matter what a person does, some ethical principle will be compromised.

Speculative design uses scenarios to travel ahead in time and paint a picture of what could happen if we don’t take new directions in the present. Speculative design can help locate our ethics and bring about the new futures we want to create for ourselves.

In my exhibition, you are invited to ‘design your future’ by responding to ethical dilemmas and speculative scenarios framed as a series of impossible questions and visuals across four screens. Each input you provide builds upon the last, strengthening or weakening the ethical direction of that future scenario through each choice.

The visuals are designed to prime your choices and challenge your ethical norms through the burden of modern-day dilemmas: the day-to-day societal questions we face, the AI assistants we rely on for support in our decision-making, and visuals presenting the merging of humans with machines as each of these visuals begin to merge as our possible futures.

The consequences of choice-making are exaggerated to supercharge the discovery of your own ethical values.