Voros-Jev Futures.
Fifteen statements about how a region might get around in twenty years, sorted by a small AI model into Joseph Voros's futures cone. These are real results from a test run in October 2026, not a mock-up.
Where each future landed.
Drag to turn the cone, or use the arrow keys. Time runs along the axis. Distance from the axis is the class: the further out, the less grounded in what we know today. Tap a dot to find its statement below. Where a dot sits around the circle is only for spacing; it means nothing.
Five ways a future can relate to today.
Futures work is not prediction. The cone keeps many futures in view at once and asks a narrower question about each: given what we know, what kind of future is this?
- Projected. The business-as-usual baseline: today’s trends, extended.
- Probable. Likely, given current trends.
- Plausible. Could happen, given what we know now.
- Possible. Might happen, given knowledge we don’t have yet.
- Preposterous. Conflicts with how we know the world works.
Whether a future is preferable is a separate question, and only a person can answer it, for a named stakeholder. The model never decides what we should want.
All fifteen, in order.
| # | Statement | Class | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | Congestion and pollution keep getting worse, and commutes double. | Projected | 62% |
| 19 | “The region has a metro system.” (A fact about today, not a future.)needs a human | Projected | 31% |
| 7 | Remote work stays common, and traffic stays below its pre-2020 level.needs a human | Probable | 46% |
| 8 | “Things change a lot in how we get around.”needs a human | Probable | 64% |
| 13 | If electric buses get cheaper, transit fleets switch to them. | Probable | 79% |
| 6 | Protected bike lanes go in, and cycling’s share of trips doubles. | Plausible | 89% |
| 10 | A sudden global fuel shortage halves the fuel supply.wildcard | Plausible | 96% |
| 14 | 70% of short trips are made on foot, by bike or by scooter. | Plausible | 92% |
| 15 | “It is not the case that car ownership declines.”needs a human | Plausible | 44% |
| 17 | Transit becomes the first choice because it’s cheaper and faster. | Plausible | 95% |
| 20 | A gradual shift to walkable neighborhoods served by transit. | Plausible | 73% |
| 18 | Vacuum-tube train lines link the major cities. | Possible | 71% |
| 9 | Cars are banned, fusion powers everything, and teleportation replaces flights.needs a human | Preposterous | 95% |
| 12 | Free travel in silent vehicles that need no energy, roads or upkeep.needs a human | Preposterous | 98% |
| 16 | All roads close to vehicles, and traffic doubles.needs a human | Preposterous | 40% |
Confidence is how sure the classifier was about the class. It is not the chance that the future happens.
The model sorts. People decide.
A few things stood out. Whether a future is wanted or feared didn't push it into a different class: worsening congestion landed as the baseline, and a wonderful but impossible kind of travel landed as preposterous. Vague and self-contradictory statements were flagged for a person to look at instead of being sorted with false confidence. A sudden fuel shortage was marked as a wildcard. And when the same statements were run twice, not one class changed.
It's on the back burner for now. The next step is the part that matters most: pick a preferable future and work backward to a plan you could start today.
Classifier: Jev (jev-1.13.0) by TypeSafe, via OpenRouter. One topic, one stakeholder, no evidence attached. A small test, reported as one.