Zarinah Agnew: Building Collective Intelligence for a Future We Can All Survive

Zarinah Agnew wants more than smarter systems—she wants a smarter species. As Research Director at the Collective Intelligence Project, she’s exploring how Artificial Intelligence can strengthen, not splinter, our ability to coordinate, communicate and coexist. Ahead of World Summit AI USA 2025 (June 18–19, San Francisco), she shares why human-AI collaboration must focus on healing divides, not deepening them—and why our biggest upgrade might not be technical, but social.

What’s your most compelling dream scenario for AI — a breakthrough that would fundamentally improve life on a global scale?

I want to see AI solve some of the problems that humans have failed on, I want to see human-AI collaboration forge a future of human and non-human flourishing, to help us transition our economic system to one that serves life, to improve our collective decision making and coordination so that we can face both the planetary challenges and opportunities that we have at our hands.

What’s a recent project or breakthrough you're especially proud of — and what kind of impact do you hope it will have in the real world?

We recently launched Global Dialogues at the Paris AI summit, these are global public conversations that happen ever two months across over 70 countries, about the present and future of AI. These are AI facilitated conversations meaning that we can gain insights in real time. Being able to coordinate public conversations at scale and at speed, means we are building the socio-technical infrastructure to coordinate as a species. This is human-AI collaboration at it's best.

What’s a use case for AI that you think more people should know about — something positive that’s flying under the radar?

AI for communicating across difference is one of the most exciting things on my horizon. Whether that be for conflict resolution and peace making, or for interspecies communication, the capacity for bridging across difference is incredible.

If you had to choose one nightmare scenario that keeps you up at night — whether realistic or speculative — what would it be, and what warning signs should we be watching for today?

AI fueled fragmentation of our society - into siloed realms of 'truth', polarized AI religions, and spiraling wealth gaps fulled by AI, weakened institutions fall prey to AI corpocracy, such that we can no longer operate in coordinated social structures and fail to address the issues of our time (climate crisis & war).

Who or what do you think has the power to prevent your nightmare scenario above?

Collective Intelligence

What are we not talking about enough in the AI conversation today — something you believe could be hugely important five years from now?

The impact and potential AI has to utterly implode or transform for the better, our economic system.

If you look ahead 10 years, what do you think will be the biggest change in our daily lives?

I think in ten years, the ways we communicate and coordinate will be entirely different. Our human-human relationships will be impacted by our human-AI relationships in tremendous ways, we are seeing the beginnings of this already underway. The digital divide will have greater consequences than ever before. I don't know whether the direction will be positive or not, but it is coming.

Do you think AGI is near? When will we have AGI?

I think this conversation parallels the search for consciousness in many ways. We make the mistake of thinking there is a clear threshold that determines the presence of these cognitive phenomena. When we reach that threshold, we shift the goal post. We want decisive moments - "this is when consciousness emerges" or "this is when we achieve AGI" - but reality may offer only gradual transitions along multidimensional spectrums. These are more akin to landscapes than destinations. I find the 'have we got AGI' conversation to be a distraction from the more acutely relevant questions, such as how do we prepare for intelligences beyond anything we have encountered before. How do we collectively ensure that we are qualified to live alongside them well? How do we as a species collectivize such that we are equipped to collaborate with machine intelligences in positive, life affirming ways, rather than be in battle with them?

Zarinah Agnew, Research Director, Collective Intelligence Project (CIP)

Zarinah Agnew (1)