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Futurist Gerd Leonhard 2026
My #1 topic for 2026: How to stop The Bad Future, and how to empower Europe to lead

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2026: The rise of The Bad Future, Europe's Mandate to Take Back Tomorrow

This video was created with the help of the amazing NotebookLM. The script was edited by me and the audio / voice-over was re-recorded live. I hope you like this experiment - please comment below! For the past 10 years, I've talked about #thegoodfuture Today I need speak about #thebadfuture, as well The U.S. once epitomized the good future - but that is over. We now face two paths: a 'good future' prioritizing humanity, purpose, and trust, versus a 'bad future' dominated by exponential techn

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YouTube

How the U.S. has lost the plot on The Good Future, and why Europe needs to #takebacktomorrow today

This presentation is an excerpt from a recent online event I did with @LondonFuturists see https://youtu.be/0WgaL3QKCDo?si=0P6D_SwWYIm4QEDv for the entire show (a must watch!) In this hard-hitting presentation I reflect on the shifts in global futures over the 2 years, emphasizing the emergence of what I call 'the bad future' see www.thebadfuture.com for more details - it's the antidote to my core theme of #thegoodfuture :) I speak about key challenges such as the rapid and painful degradat

Some recent keynotes
AI is about to hijack humanity's future
It's time to resist the accelerating dehumanisation of our society, business and industry that threatens to make humans 'useless' as the result of machines doing the thinking AND the doing, and soon… the BEING?

thebadfuture.com

2026: The Rise of The Bad Future and Europe’s New Mandate to Lead

The idea of an American Future as a global reference point no longer exists. Instead, a new reality is emerging: The Bad Future, defined by power and might over purpose, technology over humanity, and transactions over trust and cooperation - paradoxically embodied by the 'leader of the free world'.

Gerd Leonhard Futurist Humanist Author Keynote Speaker

2026: The Rise of The Bad Future and Europe’s New Mandate

The idea of an American Future as a global reference point no longer exists. Instead, a new reality is emerging: The Bad Future, defined by power and might over purpose, technology over humanity, and transactions over trust and cooperation – paradoxically embodied by the ‘leader of the free world'. This is my appeal: Europe must ‘take back tomorrow'!

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Rutger Bregman on Twitter / X

One of the most effective things you can do right now to fight Trump and ICE is to cancel your ChatGPT subscription. pic.twitter.com/3z5NLJi8r4— Rutger Bregman (@rcbregman) February 4, 2026

Technology Didn’t Fail — We Did
AI hasn’t turned “evil” … It has become normal. AI was adopted faster than the internet itself but without commensurate ethics, culture, or safeguards. Convenience has been sold as progress, personalization as insight, and automation as liberation — all while we quietly relinquish effort, judgment, responsibility, and the process of creative friction.
AI is automating creativity
AI is simulating Empathy
Data is absorbing Morality
Organisms are Algorithms!
AI is becoming a powerful geopolitical accelerant, and AGI will be our last invention
With the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, we entered the Intelligence Revolution — yet we keep defining success based on 20th-century metrics. In 2025, technology followed geopolitics. Instead of shared governance, guardrails and collective progress, we got more digital empires — and unaccountable AI billionaires running $4 Trillion tech companies. The Internet as we knew it is being absorbed by AI. We’re shrinking human experience into something machines can easily parse, while human complexity is derided as inefficiency. When humans behave like machines, machines don't just take their jobs. They redefine their values — and then they become 'digital humans'
The result of AGI will not be mass unemployment - it will be mass diminishment, the destruction of purpose & identity.
We have all the science and the tools - but we don't have the telos (the purpose, the right direction, the wisdom)
The Bad Future is a result from our failure to adopt a new economic logic that is fit for the future
Growth stayed sacred.
GDP stayed king.
Short-term profit stayed untouchable.
Purpose was dismissed as "soft."
Ethics were derided as "unscalable."
Wisdom was considered "inefficient."
When profit, growth and power remain the only goal, People become resources to be 'fracked' and mined, Nature becomes a mere input variable (extraction instead of creation), Politics are reduced to showmanship and deal-making, Power replaces responsibility and might makes right.
The results are worrisome:
Climate Solutions Are Ignored
Climate solutions exist — but are ignored, delayed, or deliberately slowed
Inequality Is Widening
Because efficiency beats dignity, and zero-sum thinking determines policies
Fear Is Replacing Purpose
Especially for Gen Y and Z - Having kids in this future is becoming unthinkable.
Why Europe must take the lead in 2026
The Good Future doesn’t vanish in times of crisis. It evolves. What has changed is not the need for it, but where it can be credibly built. It is no longer shaped by what happens in a visibly dysfunctional United States—and this assessment goes far beyond any single administration. The Good Future will not be made in the USA. It will emerge everywhere else, but its moral center must be Europe, working alongside new partners—including the BRICS countries, Canada, Africa, South Korea, Australia/New Zealand, and yes, China (more on that soon).
The Bad Future is not inevitable. It is optional. Pessimism didn’t protect us. Optimism without action wasn’t enough - I should know! And neutrality enabled the worst outcomes. We didn’t resist. We didn’t decide. We simply clicked “Accept.”
Europe must now disengage from the U.S. trajectory toward the Bad Future. Not quietly—but deliberately, visibly, and unapologetically. Europe must resist it, reject it, and stop supporting, promoting, or financing those who advance it. This is the moment to reclaim human agency, restore purpose, and lead—not by dominance, but by values.
5 Ways Europe Can Take Back Tomorrow
01
Make Human-Centered AI a Strategic Advantage
Europe must treat human agency, accountability, and dignity as design requirements—not optional features. AI should enhance human judgment, not replace it. Regulation alone is not leadership; direction is.
02
Build technological sovereignty without isolation
Europe must secure its technological foundations - data, energy, chips, cloud, and AI -while remaining open to cooperation. Strategic autonomy is not digital nationalism; it is resilience with partners.
03
Invest in humans, not just automation
Bolster human-only traits, focus on future-fit education, lifelong learning and a renewed emphasis on human-only creativity. The future belongs to societies that grow their androrithms, not just their algorithms.
04
Lead a New, Global Alliance of Trust (U.S. independent)
Europe can convene a coalition of democracies, partners and emerging economies around shared rules and goals. The EU may want to consider a boycott of the U.S. (see South Africa in the 1980s) - if the current trend continues. In a fractured world, trust becomes the new global currency.
05
Redefine Success Beyond GDP Growth: Embrace the 5Ps
Europe must lead by measuring what actually matters: well-being, resilience, trust, ecological stability, and human capability — not just growth at any cost. It's time to create new stock markets based on People, Planet, Purpose, Peace and Prosperity!
This is not idealism - It's a survival strategy. Because if Europe doesn't do it — no one will.
Take back tomorrow!