Institute For the Future (IFF)

The Institute For the Future (IFF) at UNIC was founded to explore the hypothesis that technological progress will cause rapidly accelerating societal change over the coming decades.

A wide range of technologies — artificial intelligence, biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics, augmented and virtual reality, blockchain technologies, drones, decentralised autonomous organisations, computational medicine, modern space exploration — will start reaching commercial viability by 2020. Each one of these technologies would be individually disruptive. In aggregate, these technologies will have a compounding effect on the economy, social structures, legal systems, income distribution, governance, education, and warfare — and ask fundamental questions on how society is organised.

Three Focus Areas: 2017-2018

IFF has 3 main focal areas of study in 2017-2018: Blockchain Technologies (where it is already a global leader), Artificial Intelligence, and Augmented and Virtual Reality. We aim to ask and study provocative questions like “How does Bitcoin compare to Fedwire?”, “What do self-driving cars mean for zoning requirements, insurance companies and public transportation?” and “When will robots acquire legal rights?” The goal is to push students, faculty (at our University and others), policy-makers and business leaders to prepare for these changes and aim for societally beneficial outcomes. The Institute’s mission is interdisciplinary by nature and it works across Schools and Departments to support academic programmes, research, training and conferences. Given the emerging nature of these fields, it strongly welcomes collaborations with other universities and institutes focused on similar areas.