Back in 2016, DeepMind’s AlphaGo displayed signs of genuine creativity when it defeated one of the world’s best Go players. More recently, OpenAI’s secret Q* model reportedly takes the technology behind AlphaGo forward to enable optimal and efficient decision-making, and could be a hint as to the capabilities of next generation AI models.

Despite the fact that making decisions is a constant in our everyday lives, humans can be surprisingly error-prone when it comes to judgments and making decisions, including and especially the critical ones. Why is this frequently the case and what are some practical steps that we can and should take to minimise such risk?

Events frequently take us by surprise, with Covid-19, the war in Ukraine, and the advent of Generative AI, just to name a few. Scenario planning, originally developed as military war games in the 1960s, is today a powerful tool that is used to support decision-makers to envision and plan for substantially different futures.

Most of us are pretty rubbish at assessing uncertain outcomes. This is particular true of situations that are novel, where historical precedent and human experience become irrelevant. But there is hope. SPIES is a simple yet effective framework that can be used by any individual or organisation to improve the quality of their forecasting.