Can we ignore the present long enough to save the future?

Donald Trump dominates the news. China is treated increasingly as a rival to contain or a market we cannot afford to lose. Wars, tariffs and elections demand attention. Meanwhile, questions that will shape the next generation are pushed to the edge of the conversation.

How will we govern AI systems that cross national borders? How will we adapt our economies to a changing climate? What kind of education will children need when the work they eventually do may look very different from the work we know?

These questions are difficult enough without politics getting in the way. Yet politics always will. Governments have elections to win. Businesses have this year’s numbers to deliver. Most of us respond more urgently to a visible threat today than to a greater threat whose consequences may take decades to arrive.

I do not think this is simply a failure of character. If you are running a country or a company, you cannot ignore immediate problems. The failure comes when the urgent takes up all the available thought.

The American withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in January this year is a stark example. Whatever view you take of the agreement, the climate will continue to change while governments change their minds. A problem that unfolds over generations is being handled by political systems that can reverse direction in a single election.  UNFCCC

China presents a different difficulty. There are legitimate concerns about security, dependence and competition. We would be foolish to dismiss them. But treating every shared challenge as another contest for advantage makes it harder to ask where cooperation remains essential. A country can reduce a supply risk. It cannot insulate itself completely from climate change, a pandemic or the consequences of powerful AI used elsewhere.

So, is there any evidence that human beings can act in time?

There is, although the examples should make us demanding rather than comfortable. Smallpox was eradicated through an international effort that continued during the Cold War. American and Soviet specialists worked towards the same objective while their governments remained adversaries. The disease was declared eradicated in 1980. They did not have to resolve their political differences first. They had to recognise that this particular problem required a common effort.  who.int

The Montreal Protocol offers another example. Governments agreed to phase out chemicals damaging the ozone layer, industries changed what they produced, and the science has continued to test whether the policy is working. Nearly all banned ozone depleting substances have been phased out. Recovery is expected to take decades more, but it is under way.  unep.org

Neither example proves that we will manage climate change or AI equally well. Smallpox had a clear target. The chemicals covered by the Montreal Protocol could be identified and replaced. AI touches far more of economic and political life, and its capabilities are changing as we argue about them. The successes of the past show that cooperation is possible. They do not give us permission to assume it will happen.

I spent much of my career in technology, including the early days of the Internet. We were excited by what it might enable. We gave much less thought to the institutions and behaviour it would change. We are in danger of doing that again with AI, at much greater speed. Governments talk about winning the race. Companies talk about adoption. There is far less serious discussion about who will carry the risks, who will have the power to decide, and what happens to people whose work or opportunities change as a result.

This is also a leadership problem inside organisations. A board can be entirely occupied by the quarter ahead while approving investments that will shape the business for years. It can ask whether an AI project saves money without asking what happens to the judgement, knowledge and accountability that sit behind the work. Those questions are harder. That is precisely why leaders need to make room for them.

Am I hopeful? Only conditionally. History gives us evidence that people can think beyond their immediate interests, even in divided times. It also shows how much pressure it takes to make them do so. We should stop waiting for politics to become less distracting. It never will. The practical question is whether our governments, businesses and boards can protect enough time and attention to deal with the future while the present is shouting.