I am delighted to announce the availability of a "final draft" version of the ARL/CNI Future Scenarios for AI and the Research Environment. These have been under development for about half a year and have already had some preliminary exposure in the ARL and CNI communities; it's now time for them to see wider circulation. We expect to release a final, "deluxe" version of these scenarios, possibly incorporating some limited revisions, and definitely including some supplementary materials around the end of May, 2024, and I'll announce the availability of this version here when it's ready.

I hope that you find these scenarios useful in thinking about and planning for possible future developments. Please keep in mind that these are NOT predictions about the future, but rather sketches of possible futures; the real future will undoubtedly draw from all of these scenarios, and also include many surprises that the scenarios don't consider.

I'd like to thank all of the members of the joint ARL/CNI Task Force for their contributions, along with all of those who provided important input through our various focus groups and other discussions, both virtually and in person.

For a little additional background and a link to the scenarios proper, see

ARL/CNI AI Scenarios: AI-Influenced Futures — Association of Research Libraries

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) have chosen to apply scenario planning to imagine a future influenced by artificial intelligence (AI) and to...

There's additional background on the work of the ARL/CNI task force on CNI web site at www.cni.org.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI