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.
Use immediately before a plan is finalised, to surface the blind spot that no risk workshop will name.
Solves: Risk registers list the risks people are already comfortable saying out loud.
- 1
Step 1: Step two years forward. Your AI programme has produced a scandal, or a quiet harm (5 min).
- 2
Step 2: In small groups, write the headline you would be ashamed to read (10 min).
- 3
Step 3: Work backwards. Which design choice, made this quarter, made that headline possible? (15 min)
- 4
Step 4: Name one preventive move you will make now, and who owns it (10 min).
- 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.