World building contest
The Future of Life Institute accepted entries from teams across the globe, to compete for a prize purse of up to $100,000 by designing visions of a plausible, aspirational future that includes strong artificial intelligence.
© barrow-motion
What Is World
Building?
Worldbuilding exercises generally start with some “ground rules” to provide focus. The “ground rules” are illustrated below.
Worldbuilding is the art and science of constructing a coherent and detailed fictitious world. It is frequently practiced by creative writers and scriptwriters, providing the context and backdrop for stories that take place in future, fantasy or alternative realities. Submissions will use the tools of worldbuilding to explore possible futures for our own world. They will help us better understand what sorts of worlds may be more or less desirable, and potentially how to get to a more desirable reality. Worldbuilding is not prediction: the worlds built here should be believable and internally consistent. That said, builds of future worlds are still speculative and need not target the most probable scenarios.
The Criteria
Individually or in teams, the prompt was to design a plausible and aspirational world consistent with a set of ground rules, outlined in the video above.
Plausible means that the world should be one that could well happen. In particular it should be:
- Consistent with today’s actual world;
- Consistent with known science;
- Not rely on any implausible “miracles” to make sense (though improbable events occur in any realistic world!)
Aspirational means that, while not utopian, this world is one that you and presumably many others would like to inhabit. It would be seen as a fairly good outcome and a hopeful vision. Where this is in tension with plausibility, plausibility should win – that is, being hopeful does not mean being naive, and just as your world should not rely on implausible “miracles” to make it self-consistent, it should not rely on them to be desirable.
Submissions
Submissions consisted of four elements. They were intended to tie together into a coherent picture, with e.g. the “day in the life” pieces illustrating some of the institutions, technologies, or social structures explained in the answers to the prompts.
Timeline of events from 2022-2045
"A Day in the Life" Short Stories
Answers to prompts about your world
Original non-text media piece
Prizes
Submissions closed April 15th. Twenty teams were selected and announced as finalists on May 15th. The winners will be revealed June 30th.
The general public was be invited to give feedback on these final 20 entries, largely on their aspirational quality. Incorporating this feedback, the panel of judges was tasked to rank the entries and award the following prizes:
First prize: $20,000
Two second prizes: $10,000 each
Five third prizes: $2,000 each
Ten fourth prizes: $1,000 each
Judges discretionary prizes: up to five prizes of up to $2,000 each.
Important note: Prizes are to be evenly split among members of prizewinning teams, but to encourage collaboration they will also be up-scaled by a factor of 1.5 for 2-person teams, 1.75 for 3-person teams, 1.875 for 4-person teams, and 2.0 for 5-person or more teams. Thus, e.g., a two-person team winning first prize would be awarded $15,000 each. This means that the contest has a total prize pool of up to $140,000.
Our Finalists
Explore the worlds of the 20 finalists our judges selected. Tell us – what kinds of futures do you want? We are seeking audience input for each world. Winners will be announced June 30th.
Disclaimer – This work is the product of the Worldbuilding Contest participants. The ideas presented here are not to be taken as FLI’s positions.
Teams
Countries
Individuals
Futures selected as finalists
Finalists
W-0000000088
Jackson Wagner, Diana Gurvich, Holly Oatley
USA
W-0000000135
Julian Dreiman
USA
W-0000000180
Rob Morano
USA
0000000262
Chiara Ricciardone, Micah White
USA
W-0000000282
Kanad Chakrabarti
USA/UK
W-0000000313
John Burden, Lara Mani, Jessica Bland, Beba Cibralic, Henry Shevlin, Clarissa Rios Rojas, Catherine Richards
UK, USA, Peru, Australia
W-0000000335
Liav Koren
Canada
W-0000000429
Michael Vassar, Matija Franklin, Bryce Hidysmith
USA, UK
W-0000000451
Mark L., Patrick B., Natalia C.
USA
W-0000000468
Jose Cordeiro, Jerome Glenn, Theodore Gordon, Elizabeth Florescu, Maria Mateo, Veronica Agreda
Bolivia, Romania, Spain, USA, Venezuela
W-0000000101
Andrew Lyjak, Brandy Riedel
USA
W-0000000165
Conrad Whitaker, Dexter Findley, Tracey Kamande
Kenya
W-0000000245
Jaime Sevilla
Spain
W-0000000281
Mako Yass
New Zealand
W-0000000286
Cressot Loic
France
W-0000000318
Kyle Moser, Andrew Escher, Edward Braillif, Luisa Venegoni, Mac Kammerer
USA
W-0000000415
Rebecca Rapple
USA
W-0000000450
Nicol Ogston, Vanessa Hanschke, Tashi Namgyal, Elaine Czech, Susan Lechelt
England, Scotland, Poland, Germany, USA
W-0000000454
Martin Wagah, Carringtone Kinyanjui
Kenya
W-0000000476
Anna Dolliver, Ashley Nagel, Ivy Mazzola, William Kiely, Juno Jin, Vivienne Mazzola
USA
Honorable Mentions
W-0000000065
Willow Wong, Wenxi Zhang, Li Min Ong, Mark Findlay, Xenia Bapasola
Singapore
W-0000000108
Antonio Di Fenza, Graham Herdman, Sergio Gramitto-Ricci, Paul Grzesik, Andrea Marzilli, Marco Iodice, Davide Camposano
Italy, U.S.A., Germany, Australia
W-0000000344
Karl von Wendt, Jan Hendrik, Kirchner
Germany
W-0000000102
Carlos Largacha-Martinez, John W. Murphy, Jonathan Tavssberger, Maria Isabela Gomez, Daniela Chavez
Colombia, USA
W-0000000215
Natasha Mott, Brett Bakos, Richard Striano, Jessica Mitchell, Hanna Waters
USA
Youth Section
W-0000000231
Alex Mao, Felisha Wang, Serry Shen, Ian Lam, Sasha Manu
14-15 year old team from Hong Kong
W-0000000260
Dina Black, Quin Kondis, Shyla Gupta, Mas Dixon, Julia Brodsky
12-14 year old team from the USA
W-0000000388
Aiden Lundbarg
14 year old from the USA
W-0000000394
Sai Ankit Venkumahanthi
16 year old from India
W-0000000249
Ethan Yao, Ivan To, Jonathan Hui, Sasha Manu
14-15 year old team from Hong Kong
W-0000000376
Zoe Anzman
13 year old from Hong Kong
W-0000000390
Sasha Timokhov, Kai Minejima-Le, Maya Patterson, Ilan Shterenberg, Sacha Labarre, Julia Brodsky
12-14 year old team from the USA
The youth section seeks to celebrate the hard work and imagination of future generations. The work illustrated above was produced exclusively by applicants aged 12 to 16. Only completed applications were selected.