Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator

The opening plenary session (©GESDA/von Loebell)

The summit brought together leaders from around the world on Wednesday for a series of talks examining the opportunities to use science anticipation in addressing global challenges.

 

The three-day Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipation Summit, held for the second year in a row in the CERN Science Gateway, highlighted the intersection of diplomacy, science, and technology. 

 

Terms such as anticipation, acceleration, agency, horizon-scanning, and opportunity punctuated the reflections of speakers starting with the welcome addresses by Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the GESDA Chairman, Alexandre Fasel, State Secretary of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, and Tatiana Valovaya, Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva.

“The best way to accelerate is to anticipate,” said Fasel, who noted that Switzerland has used its two-year seat on the United Nations Security Council since the start of 2023 to socialize the idea of anticipatory science diplomacy.

Valovaya, a former professor of international economy in Russia, emphasized the repeated role that rapid advances play in history, such as with the Industrial Revolution, in driving economic and societal changes.
“Each time it’s a revolution in science and technology,” she said.

Pointing to the looming prospect of people inhabiting the Moon, she suggested the world needs a treaty to regulate what happens rather than depend on countries that are “developing their national legislation.”

The summit also offered a live demo of the new Geneva Public Portal to Anticipation, an interactive installation at the intersection of art, science and diplomacy, that empowers visitors to craft their fictional futures based on science trends of the GESDA Science Breakthrough Radar®.

A live demo of the Geneva Public Portal to Anticipation (©GESDA/von Loebell)

‘Dramatic flow of breakthroughs’

 

Michael Hengartner, Chair of the GESDA Academic Forum and President of the ETH Board overseeing two Swiss federal institutes of technology and four research institutes, introduced the fourth annual GESDA Radar, a neutral tool and guide to anticipated breakthroughs over the next quarter-century that now includes a Radar AI tool to ease access and searchability.

The world is experiencing a “dramatic flow of breakthroughs” in post-pandemic medicine, revolutionary AI, urgent climate science and experimental gene therapy, he said, but “despite all these breakthroughs, there are a lot of questions we still cannot answer.”

Using science anticipation as a tool, he added, “allows us to gain agency over our future and then we can make informed decisions that will guide our decisions over the next decades.”

At an opening plenary, Subra Suresh, a former Director of the U.S. National Science Foundation, described two kinds of “good science” – science applied to technological applications and solutions, and science that is “not yet applied.” But, he cautioned, “as we need to engage more and more openly, more and more walls have gone up.”

Patricia Gruber, the Science and Technology Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State, said her job is to anticipate impacts and, through “horizon scanning,” determine how to be less reactive “before we get caught by that ChatGPT moment” again.

A networking break during the summit’s first day (©GESDA/von Loebell)

Panel sessions and anticipatory briefings based on the new Radar

Other discussions focused on questions such as:

𖤓 How can academics, biotech companies, and regulatory bodies collaborate to ensure that the benefits of neurotechnologies become widely accessible while safeguarding individual rights?

𖤓 How could the latest research unravelling the mysteries of life deep within the Earth influence our understanding of biology, evolution, and the search for extraterrestrial life?

𖤓 How can we design future protection models that balance innovation, access, and fairness in a rapidly evolving technological landscape?

𖤓 How will synthetic biology develop and be applied in various fields?

𖤓 What role can innovative business models play in enhancing progress on pandemic preparedness?

𖤓 How are the new technologies that are transforming modern archaeology also redefining our understanding of historical narratives?