AI-assisted braintstorming for scenario thinking

This article returns to Alex Faickney Osborn's iconic 1953 book Applied Imagination in which the process of “brainstorming” was first introduced to academic audiences. In scenario thinking, the capacity to brainstorm is an essential, core component, even if few scholars and practitioners seem to return directly to Osborn's original insights about the disciplined application of imagination. As the futures and foresight science community braces for the impending impact of artificial intelligence, we return readers to the fact that Osborn's work, some 70 years ago, which championed human creativity, was written during the rise of the first “electronic brains” (i.e., computers) and all the potential implications of computing power for individuals in all realms of the thought industry. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to bring those AIs together in the context of scenario thinking; to recover seemingly lost insights from Osborn's notion of Applied Imagination and consider what those insights mean for our contemporary context rife with the opportunities but also concerns of Artificial Intelligence.