Tomorrow’sFront Page
Every one of these could run tomorrow. Deal one to a table and watch what people reach for first.
Not one of these headlines is waiting on a breakthrough. The technology in every card already exists — in a lab, a museum, a shipping lane, a cassava field.
That is the whole reason they work in a room. Nobody can wave them off as science fiction, because someone has already built the hard part. And nobody can end the argument with a fact, because what is left to decide is not technical. It is who holds the tool, at what scale, and with whose permission.
Eight headlines, sixteen sources
Every card carries the same three sentence stems. Underneath each one here is what is already happening in the world, and two places to read further. Tap a clipping to open the print-ready card.
Team wins their second consecutive championship after partnering with an AI athletics firm that generates the starting lineup.
What is realPublished models already recommend formations and assign players to positions. Google DeepMind and Liverpool FC built TacticAI for corner kicks, and expert coaches preferred its suggestions most of the time.
Town invites citizens to clone their voices to help people in the future understand our world today.
What is realThe USC Shoah Foundation films survivors answering thousands of questions, so a visitor can ask and hear a reply. Maya Angelou’s estate authorised a recreation of her voice for an educational experience.
City collects the most accurate bird count thanks to the new AI initiative.
What is realDrones and AI already count birds directly. Researchers at the University of Missouri report above 95% accuracy over open water, and USGS uses drone imagery with deep learning to count mixed nesting colonies.
Farmers save crops with the help of a special AI model developed by local students.
What is realTwo high school students built PlantMD to identify plant disease from a photo. A student team at Louisiana State University built FarmSmart, an assistant grounded in agricultural research, for growers in their own state.
Historic town art restored and decoded thanks to AI.
What is realMIT restored a damaged painting under a removable, AI-designed printed mask. DeepMind’s Aeneas helps historians restore missing text in ancient inscriptions, and date and place them.
The School Board has its first AI member to help represent a citizen from the future.
What is realInternational Holding Company appointed an AI board observer to support its directors’ deliberations. MIT’s Future You lets a person hold a conversation with a plausible later version of themselves.
Coastal town uses AI analysis of whale calls to rethink its tourist boat routes.
What is realWhale Safe turns AI-assisted acoustic detection into speed and route guidance for mariners in the Santa Barbara Channel. Project CETI and UC Berkeley use machine learning to study patterns in sperm whale communication.
Students win prize for AI-designed bus routes that save commuters from traffic.
What is realAn MIT team won a $15,000 transportation challenge for optimising Boston’s school bus routes. McGill researchers now design transit networks with deep reinforcement learning, tested on benchmarks and a simulation of Laval.
The prompts are the method
The same three sentence starters sit on every card. They are not decoration — each one is doing a different job, and the order matters more than people expect.
“If this became ordinary, we might…”
A futures wheel
The first consequence is easy and a little boring. Push the table to the second and the third, where the interesting trouble lives.
“Something we could only learn by trying this is…”
The experimental stance
Treats the headline as an experiment instead of a forecast. Names the knowledge that only exists on the far side of a decision somebody has to make.
“I want to understand what my initial reaction reveals about…”
The reflexive turn
This is why the deck lands with adults. It moves from the headline down to the worldview holding the headline up.
Two ways to run this
One plays like a game and produces something the room keeps. The other fits in the gap before lunch. Pick by how much time you actually have, not by how much you wish you had.
The Long Game
50–60 min · tables of 4–5Rounds, roles, a trade, and a ninth headline the room writes itself. You need the printed cards, sticky notes, and one wall.
Deal one card face down per table
Do not hand out the research. The whole design depends on people committing to a position before they know what is real.
6 min
Turn it over. Write alone.
Everyone answers all three stems in their own handwriting. No talking. The silence is doing work — it stops the loudest read of the headline from becoming the table’s read.
12 min
Take a role and argue it
Each person draws a role and speaks for 90 seconds from inside it. Nobody speaks as themselves yet.
The Booster
Argues this is straightforwardly good news, and says who benefits first.
The Skeptic
Names what breaks, and who is holding the pieces when it does.
The Archivist
Holds the research and reveals it — but only when the table asks a question it cannot answer.
The Citizen from 2040
Speaks only in the past tense, as if all of this settled long ago. “What surprised us was…”
5 min
The reveal, then a vote
The Archivist reads both real sources aloud. The table then rates the headline 1–5 on how surprised they would be to see it next year.
Ask the one question that matters here: did knowing the research move anybody’s number, or only their reasons?
8 min
Trade cards with the next table
Same three stems, five minutes flat, no roles. The speed is the point — the second card is where people notice their own pattern of reaction rather than the card’s content.
12 min
Write the ninth headline
Each table drafts one new headline that passes the plausibility test: the technology exists somewhere today, and the only missing piece is a decision somebody has to make. Write it on a sticky and put it on the wall.
This is the artifact. It is also the assessment — a table that writes something impossible has not yet found the premise.
8 min
Gallery walk and one mark each
Everyone walks the wall and puts a single mark on the headline they would least like to be surprised by. Read the top two aloud. Ask what would have to be true, in this building, for that one to arrive well rather than badly.
Your cardPress deal to draw one of the eight headlines.
The Quick Pass
12 min · any group sizeNo roles, no wall, no materials beyond one card per table. This is the version for the twenty minutes you were actually given.
Turn the card over and write alone
All three stems, no talking. Two minutes feels short. Keep it short anyway.
Pairs — but read the third stem first
Reaction goes before analysis. Starting with what my reaction reveals keeps the pair out of a debate about whether the headline is likely, which is the least interesting conversation available.
Whole room, one card at a time
Each table reads its headline aloud, then one stem. Not all three — pick the one that surprised them.
Reveal the research and close
Read the research aloud for one card only. Then close on a single question: what would have to be true here for us to say yes?
Everything here is yours
The eight cards
Print-ready squares, one headline each, with the three stems already on them. Good on a table, a slide, or a wall.
The one-page handout
All eight headlines, the research behind each, the three stems, and the short protocol — on a single sheet you can hand round a session.