explore · Strategy · 30–45 min · 3-20 people · medium energy
Dark Future (Black Mirror)
Write the episode in which your AI capability programme goes badly wrong. Not a risk register — a story, with a headline you would be ashamed to read. Then work backwards to the design choice that made it possible.
When to use Dark Future (Black Mirror)
Use immediately before a plan is finalised, to surface the blind spot that no risk workshop will name.
What it solves
Risk registers list the risks people are already comfortable saying out loud.
How to run Dark Future (Black Mirror), step by step
- Step two years forward. Your AI programme has produced a scandal, or a quiet harm (5 min).
- In small groups, write the headline you would be ashamed to read (10 min).
- Work backwards. Which design choice, made this quarter, made that headline possible? (15 min)
- Name one preventive move you will make now, and who owns it (10 min).
Materials needed
- Paper
- Pens
- The draft plan being pressure-tested
Facilitator tips
- Insist on a specific, publishable headline. 'Something goes wrong with data' is not a headline.
- The most useful stories are quiet harms, not dramatic scandals.
- Do not let the group solve the problem in step 2. Write the story first.
Common pitfalls
- The group writes science fiction that has nothing to do with their own design choices.
- It becomes a compliance exercise and the real, uncomfortable scenario stays unsaid.
What it produces
One shameful headline, and the design choice that would have caused it, with a preventive move.
Origin
A speculative ethics exercise in the spirit of Black Mirror writers-room prompts. Used in the VERIFY method (letter Y) to surface blind spots before a plan is locked.
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