During the dialogue leading up to basecamp, and through our discussions at basecamp:London itself, we hope:

1. Participants will be better able to see, and to question, the dominant assumptions on the future of computation, and how computation will relate to real people. Particularly, we hope participants will gain the power to push back on these widespread assumptions about the future:
   • That ever-bigger data analysis can continually reduce the uncertainty in the world.
   • That evolving systems (like economies and societies, particularly those supported by computing power) can be engineered to naturally and reliably optimize society.
   • That the "rational" (and, therefore, the "best") aspects of human thinking can be captured and replicated by computers.
     • That our understanding of the mind can be approached through the learnings of computation.
   • That computers will eventually be able to do a large percentage of jobs as well as humans in the near future.
   • That "smart" gadgets, "smart" internets of things (IoT), "smart" cities, etc. are vital and viable elements of solving many future social ills.
2. We hope participants will be able to imagine a world where these assumptions are scientifically proven to be permanently untrue. This is a thought experiment. The statements we've listed above may all be completely true, partially true, or impossible to prove to be true or false. We just don't know yet. But we believe that if we want to build a healthier relationship between people and computation, then we need to recognize and value what humanity brings to the relationship. There is something special about humanity, and this special something is deeply and permanently needed to make computational useful. Through our dialogue, we hope that participants will agree with me that we live in a world where:
   • Uncertainty is not a quality of reality itself, but a quality of the human mind. It is something that we, as humans, bring to the relationship, and it is irresolvable, permanently, regardless of the vastness of data gathering and the power of computation assigned to it. Big Data analysis can only ever make a small dent in our real, human uncertainty about the future.
   • Evolving systems (economies, societies, and our evolving technological infrastructure etc.), regardless of their engineering, strictly cannot be relied upon to find values that are "best" for society. Systems that are not explicitly and actively regulated by people fundamentally cannot be relied upon to create the best possible social outcomes on their own.
   • Our faculties of human reason are not just computational, but are deeply tied to physical, emotional, social aspects of humanity that strictly cannot be duplicated in machines. General artificial intelligence will never be realized. Human intelligence has special properties that must persist to adequately cope with real world challenges.
   • The vast majority of human jobs cannot be done well by machines. Displacement of human jobs almost always loses something that is fundamental to the good of human society.
   • "Smart" is a misnomer for the gadgets, cities, networks and societies we are increasingly relying on for a better future, and such reliance is desperately hopeful, almost messianic in character: Technology's advance cannot be religiously relied upon to fix humanity's problems.
3. Through our dialogue, we hope that participants create strategies for combining computation along with the special nature of human intelligence (at the individual, social, and global scales) to make for a better world. Maybe we're wrong and there is no special nature of human intelligence. But even if there isn't, we hope this exploration will help us all to explore better strategies to combine computation with people to make a better world.
4. We hope that participants feel emboldened to express their own ideas and create their own projects for how humans can use computation to create a better future.

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INPUT REQUEST #3: Expected Outcomes

• What questions or comments do you have about the expected outcomes for this dialogue?
• What additional expected outcomes would you like to suggest?
• What expected outcomes do you have for this Challenge Dialogue (as in "I would consider this dialogue a success if….")