In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt assembled what was then the most credentialed group of forecasters in the world. He called it the Brain Trust.

He asked them to map the next 25 years.

They missed transistors. They missed atomic energy. They missed antibiotics. They missed faster-than-sound travel. They missed space probes. They missed World War II.

I have spent the last 16 years interviewing 300 of the most credentialed futurists alive. From Ray Kurzweil to Peter Diamandis to Marvin Minsky to Sir Martin Rees.

They agree on almost nothing.

That is my report from inside the room.

There is now a professional class that sells certainty about an inherently uncertain thing. Call it the crystal ball industry. The product is confidence. The buyer is the anxious executive. The medium is the keynote stage.

The smartest CEOs have already started walking away from the prophets.

If you are an event planner or a CEO scoping a futurist keynote speaker, the question is not “is this person credentialed?”

Plenty of credentialed people sell crystal balls.

The real question is one you can ask in five seconds. The answer tells you everything.

My latest piece walks through the structural reasons this industry fails (with Kurzweil, Musk, and Hinton as case studies), why no forecaster pays a price for being wrong, and the test that separates the real ones from the prophets.

Read it before your next booking: [ https://snglrty.co/4nNAv4k](https://snglrty.co/4nNAv4k)

#Futurism #Leadership #AI #KeynoteSpeaker #Strategy

Many futurist keynote speakers sell crystal balls. The good ones hold mirrors. How to tell the difference, from a working futurist.