The Mimir Center for Long Term Futures Research

A research environment at IFFS with a mission to carry out world leading, rigorous academic basic research on issues regarding the long-term future of civilization.

Cogito Machina - Investigating the emergence of artificial general intelligence

Is AGI emergent? In order to know, several questions need to be answered and this project aims to provide the answeres. What is AGI? What is required for a system to have it, and how might we know whether AGI is emergent in a system. 

Welcome to this seminar with David Grusky, Professor of Sociology at Stanford University.The seminar is jointly organized by the Institute for Analytical Sociology and the Institute for Futures Studies.D Thursday, October 6 13:00-15:00 (CET) At the Institute for Futures Studies (Holländargatan 13, Stockholm), or onlineIf qualitative work were to be rebuilt around open science principles of transparency and reproducibility, what types of institutional reforms are needed? It’s not enough to mimic open science movements within the quantitative field by focusing on problems of data archiving and reanalysis. The more fundamental problem is a legal-institutional one: The field has cut off the development of transparent, reproducible, and cumulative qualitative research by betting on a legal-institutional model in which qualitative scholars are incentivized to collect data by giving them ownership rights over them. This neoliberal model of privatized qualitative research has cut off the development of public-use data sets of the sort that have long been available for quantitative data. If a public-use form of qualitative research were supported, it would not only make qualitative research more open (i.e., transparent, reproducible, cumulative) but would also expand its reach by supporting new uses. The American Voices Project – the first nationally-representative open qualitative data set in the US – is a radical test of this hypothesis. It is currently being used to validate (or challenge!) some of the most famous findings coming out of conventional “closed” qualitative research, to serve as an “early warning system” to detect new crises and developments in the U.S., to build new approaches to taking on poverty, the racial wealth gap, and other inequities, and to monitor public opinion in ways far more revealing than conventional forced-choice surveys. The purpose of this talk is to discuss the promise – and pitfalls – of this new open-science form of qualitative research as well as opportunities to institutionalize it across the world. 

Should Scholars Own Data? David Grusky About the American Voices Project

If qualitative work were to be rebuilt around open science principles of transparency and reproducibility, what types of institutional reforms are needed? It’s not enough to mimic open science movemen

Julia Adler

I am a research assistant at the Mimir Center for Longterm Futures Research. In my role as research assistant I support the research group with planning, administration and implementation of the projec I am also writing my master's thesis in political science at Stockholm University as part of this project. I also support the communications department.

Joe Roussos

I am a researcher in philosophy at the Institute for Futures Studies. I did my PhD at the London School of Economics, with a thesis entitled Policymaking under scientific uncertainty. My research concer

Andrea S. Asker

I am a PhD candidate at Stockholm University and a research assistant at the Institute for Futures Studies. I am also affiliated with the Mimir Center for Long Term Futures at the institute. I have an in

On several key issues, societies around the world are at crossroads. How can climate change be addressed? How will democracy evolve in the world? How will technological breakthroughs shape our lives? H

Geoengineering is a term used to describe techniques for large-scale manipulation of the climate to reduce the Earth's average temperature. These controversial ideas are now being debated more extensi

Current and Recent Projects The Mimir Institute for Long Term Futures Studies Climate Ethics and Future Generations Sustainable Population in the Time of Climate Change Anxieties of Democracy The Boundary