The age of prediction: How data and technology are driving exponential change

The age of prediction: How data and technology are driving exponential change

The growing ability to predict the future presents a significant opportunity for business and society.

The same advances in technology that have increased our predictive capability have also made the task much more complex.

To overcome this, we must change the way we understand the future and our place within it.



This is the dawn of the golden age of predictive technologies. Billions of sophisticated algorithms powered by vast computers enable forecasters to process ever-larger amounts of data. In a range of fields from weather to medicine to business, our ability to draw conclusions about the future should be better now than at any stage in history.

And yet, it isn’t. Indeed, our recent past – from COVID-19 to the great financial crisis – could be viewed as a history of our failure to predict the future.

The advent of technology and the resulting change in our ability to foresee potential future events has coincided with an exponential increase in the range and variety of possible outcomes. The same advances in technology that have enabled us to be more certain about our decisions have increased the complexity of the landscape in which those decisions take place. The chart