Will 2025 be catastrophic? Or on the contrary, will it mark a new beginning for humanity? Will we finally find love? Rather than asking these questions to astrologers who will predict the future for the lions, third decan, fire trout ascendant, we preferred to rely on science fiction authors, whose overflowing imagination allows us to draw up the scenario possible futures. It is for this purpose that the French army has employed, since 2019, a team of authors as part of the Red Team Defense program, which allows it to prepare for potential conflicts envisaged by artists. In the same idea, The Pathfinder has set up its own Red Team to prepare for 2025.
The beginning of the end for AI?
Alex Nikolavitch is a screenwriter, translator and author specializing in imaginative literature. In recent years, he has become interested in the different fictions surrounding the end of the world and his essay, All the imagination of the Apocalypsescomes out in an enriched version in February 2025. And good news, the end of the world is not this year, according to the expert. On the other hand, that of artificial intelligence is rearing its ugly head.
“My prediction for 2025? I think that generative AI will reach the end of its cycle, like NFTs before it. The signs are already there: operators are forced to restrict allocated resources; with each increment of quality requiring exponentially greater power, a limit had to be set. Or charge full price. Worse still, as the entire Net is flooded with content generated by AI, which other AI feeds on to generate other content, in a feedback loop that would make feedback seem like the pinnacle of melody, results are more and more curious, chaotic… André Breton would not deny them, or not always. The signal-to-noise ratio collapses, as they used to say in the days when the meaning of words still mattered. So, end of the AI bubble? It seems like wishful thinking, but, after all, wishes at the end of the year are tradition. Hey, Chat-Journey, can you make me a pretty greeting card? »
The American author Ken Liu made a remarkable entry into French bookstores with the publication by Le Bélial’ of his collection The paper menagerie, in 2015, then his novel The man who ended the storyin 2016. In 2025, the end of the story will rather concern AI, according to him, but a much more dramatic end than that envisaged by Alex Nikolavitch:
“My prediction for 2025 is that we will have the first big scandal involving AI making decisions when it doesn’t have to. So far, AI’s mistakes have remained largely off the public radar: a poor model blamed for prematurely ending medical treatment coverage, a few self-driving cars that killed their passengers, a breeding program of military targets criticized for undervaluing civilian lives. Excuses were made, some people got their straps pulled, and then we moved on, distracted by the next celebrity sex scandal. But this can’t last forever. The time of reckoning is approaching. By 2025, an AI-driven decision-making system will ultimately cause so much death and destruction that the world will be forced to admit how much control we have already given up. And that would be the most optimistic outcome. »
Moon objective… postponed
A big name in imaginative literature and a multi-award-winning author, Catherine Dufour was interested in lunar exploration in her latest novel, The fields of the Moonpublished in September by Robert Laffont. If she imagines the future terraforming of our natural satellite, she is afraid that this future is not close to coming true. Certainly not in 2025, anyway…
« 2025, we will not walk on the Moon.
2025 was to be a lunar year. Lunar and American, at least. NASA had promised it for 2025: the mission Artemis II had to tread on the regolith. We talked about“exploration durable”of “regular missions” and even “the installation of a permanent station on the Moon”. All this with the stated intention of building a spaceport with the planet Mars as its destination. Well, it was Trump who promised it in 2019, which perhaps explains certain things. And in particular that the Space Launch System (SLS) launcher has fallen so late that it looks like an abandonment.
2025 will not be the lunar year so promised and we will only have to keep our eyes lowered towards the surface of the Earth, its incessant dramas and its attrition which seems inevitable. All and all? No. A handful of men and women will spend 2025 in the harshest lands of Iceland, training in “almost lunar conditions”. Courage to them, and to them! And see you in 2026.”
Preparing for the world after
Kitty Steward has been exploring possible futures for over 20 years, without any boundaries. Whether it concerns social relations in the collapsed society of Foodistanwhere diets reshape human relationships, or the future of our lifestyles in urban areas in Free neighborhoodsshe is interested in the future in the plural. This is also the title of his essay soon to be republished by Inframonde. For The Pathfindershe decided to let the collective speak in order to imagine what 2025 will be like, a year which could mark Year I of the collapse.
“I personally have no connection with the future and I don’t particularly want the speculations I indulge in in my fiction to come true. However, if the stories created during my writing workshops said something about the intentions and desires of the participants, then Noisy-le-Sec would have to prepare to see tropical animals circulating in its streets and Brussels would have to organizes for an alternation of life on the surface and underground life. If we are to believe the stories of Lyon students, it is time to invest massively in lenses. Parisians, reorganized into neighborhoods, would find themselves forced to train in various medical techniques to cope with the abandonment of health services by the State. As for Toulouse, in addition to the experiments in participatory democracy, we should expect to travel on the Garonne and its new canals during episodes of flooding, which are increasingly frequent. What I hope for these places and for the world is a massive awareness of the possibility of acting collectively to make fairer and more inclusive societies possible, and to limit the effects of the destruction already well underway. the planet. »
Producer and host of It’s more than sci-fiLloyd Chéry fell into it when he was very young. Became deputy editor-in-chief of Screaming metal and screenwriter of Vertigeohe is now preparing the ambitious exhibition Further away. The new science fiction which will be unveiled at the Cité de la BD during the Angoulême Festival. Suffice to say that he knows his field well and, with his experience in this area, here is what he fears for the coming year:
“Two themes will return in 2025. The beginnings of the water war should rear their heads. Accessibility to water will become an increasingly pressing subject, as will the problems linked to its pollution. The other theme will come from the decline in birth rates. While new wave science fiction predicted the disasters of overpopulation with authors like John Brunner, we realize that there will be progressively fewer men and women on the planet, but more elderly people. In short, we will experience new challenges which promise to be exciting. The only downside is that we sometimes have the impression that The sons of man is getting closer. »
