Digital Futurists to Watch in 2027
The thinkers mapping where AI, work and society go next — an updated edition of Engatica's digital futurists list.
At SXSW in March 2026, Amy Webb — the futurist who industrialised the annual tech trends report — opened her keynote with a mock funeral for it. The format, she argued, is dead: a once-a-year snapshot of a landscape that now changes monthly. It was the most honest moment in modern futurism, and it sets the standard for this list. The futurists worth watching in 2027 are not the ones with the boldest timelines. They are the ones who publish their reasoning, show their receipts, and — like Webb killing her own flagship product, or Daniel Kokotajlo publicly revising his AI timelines in December 2025 — update in public when the world moves.
The watch list
| Name | Known as | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Bernard Marr | Author and strategic advisor | AI strategy in practice — AI Strategy (2025) |
| Cheryl Cran | Founder, NextMapping; author, Super.Crucial.Human | Future of work and leadership — profiled in our Innovators directory |
| Daniel Burrus | Futurist, Burrus Research; AI Expert in Residence, High Point University | Hard trends vs soft trends in technology cycles |
| Gerd Leonhard | Futurist and author, Technology vs Humanity | Human futures in an automated economy |
| Amy Webb | CEO, Future Today Strategy Group | "Living Intelligence" — AI, biotech and sensors converging; scenario planning |
| Rohit Bhargava | Founder, Non-Obvious Company | The Future Normal and Future Words (Nov 2026), after the concluded Non-Obvious Trends series |
| Thomas Frey | Founder, DaVinci Institute; Executive Director, Futurist Speaker Inc. | Jobs, education and infrastructure futures |
| Faith Popcorn | Founder, BrainReserve; consumer-culture pioneer | Consumer behaviour foresight — a legacy voice; little verifiable new work in recent years |
| Ray Kurzweil | Author, The Singularity Is Nearer | Long-horizon AI timelines |
| Kevin Kelly | Co-founder, WIRED | 2049: Possibilities of the Next 10,000 Days; technology's long arcs |
| Sir Niall Ferguson | Historian, Hoover Institution | AI geopolitics — AI as an arms race |
| Ian Khan | Futurist; host of The Futurist (Amazon Prime Video) | Technology readiness and enterprise futures; the AI Readiness Score |
| Daniel Kokotajlo | Former OpenAI forecaster; leads the AI Futures Project | AI 2027 scenario — and the public revisions that followed it |
| Sinead Bovell | Founder, WAYE; advisor to the UN AI Advisory Body | AI literacy — translating AI for non-technical audiences |
How to use a futurist
Treat futurists as scenario generators, not oracles. The useful output is not a prediction to believe but a spread of futures to prepare for — and a sharper sense of which of your assumptions are doing the heavy lifting. Pair every bold 2030 claim with our more grounded AI trends briefing.
The new names: forecasters with receipts
Two voices earned their place on this list during 2025–26 by doing the thing futurists are supposed to do and rarely do: commit to specifics, in writing, where they can be checked. Daniel Kokotajlo, a former OpenAI forecaster who now leads the AI Futures Project, published AI 2027 in April 2025 — a month-by-month scenario of the race to superintelligence that became the reference point for the public AGI debate. Then, in December 2025, he did the rarer thing: published updated forecasts pushing full coding automation into the early 2030s, followed by AI 2040: Plan A in July 2026, a policy scenario for slowing down deliberately. Agree or disagree, the method — dated claims, explicit assumptions, public revisions — is what "watch this futurist" should mean now.
Sinead Bovell works the other end of the problem: not when advanced AI arrives, but whether societies understand it when it does. Founder of the education organisation WAYE and an expert advisor to the UN AI Advisory Body, she has built a following by translating AI developments for non-technical audiences — Vogue calls her "the AI educator for the non-nerds" — and launched her podcast I've Got Questions in September 2025 to do it in long form. In a list full of people predicting the future, Bovell's beat is the comprehension gap that decides whether the predictions help or harm.
The incumbents, meanwhile, keep moving. Amy Webb's firm rebranded from Future Today Institute to Future Today Strategy Group in March 2025, and her "Living Intelligence" framework — AI, biotech and sensors converging — replaced the raw trend list as her organising idea. Daniel Burrus added a university chair (AI Expert in Residence at High Point University, June 2026) to his Burrus Research practice. And Niall Ferguson, the historian on this list, spent 2026 writing about AI as an arms race in The Free Press — a reminder that the most useful futurist lens is sometimes a very old one.
Frequently asked questions
Which futurists are worth following in 2027?
This list rewards method over boldness: forecasters who publish their reasoning, show their receipts and update in public. It includes Amy Webb of Future Today Strategy Group, Daniel Kokotajlo of the AI Futures Project, Sinead Bovell of WAYE, Bernard Marr, Cheryl Cran, Daniel Burrus, Gerd Leonhard, Ray Kurzweil, Kevin Kelly and Sir Niall Ferguson, among others. Kokotajlo and Bovell are the newest additions, earned during 2025–26 for the AI 2027 scenario and for AI literacy work respectively.
What happened to Amy Webb's Future Today Institute?
It rebranded. In March 2025, Amy Webb's firm became Future Today Strategy Group, and her organising framework is now "Living Intelligence" — AI, biotechnology and advanced sensors converging. At SXSW in March 2026, she opened her keynote with a mock funeral for her own annual Tech Trends Report, arguing that a once-a-year snapshot cannot track a landscape that changes monthly, and replaced it with the Convergence Outlook.
Who is Daniel Kokotajlo, and why is he on this list?
A former OpenAI forecaster who now leads the AI Futures Project. In April 2025, he published AI 2027, a month-by-month scenario of the race to superintelligence that became the reference point for the public AGI debate. Then, in December 2025, he did the rarer thing: published updated forecasts pushing full coding automation into the early 2030s, followed by AI 2040: Plan A in July 2026. Dated claims, explicit assumptions, public revisions — that method is what "watch this futurist" should mean now.
How should you use a futurist's predictions?
Treat futurists as scenario generators, not oracles. The useful output is not a prediction to believe but a spread of futures to prepare for — and a sharper sense of which of your assumptions are doing the heavy lifting. Prefer voices that commit to specifics in writing, where they can be checked, and that revise in public when the world moves. Pair every bold 2030 claim with our AI trends briefing for the more grounded version of the same questions.
Sources
- Wikipedia. (2026). "Daniel Kokotajlo". Wikipedia.
- Speakers' Spotlight. (2026). "Sinead Bovell | AI & Future of Work Expert". Speakers.ca.
- Speakers Associates. (2026). "Amy Webb — Founder and CEO, Future Today Strategy Group". Speakers Associates.
- Future Media Hubs. (2025). "SXSW 2025: Amy Webb predicts the arrival of Living Intelligence". Future Media Hubs.
- Burrus Research. (2026). "Daniel Burrus Joins HPU as AI Expert in Residence". Burrus.com.
- Non-Obvious Company. (2026). "The Non-Obvious Company" (Future Words, releasing Nov 10, 2026; Non-Obvious Trends series history). Non-Obvious Company.
- CIR Magazine. (2025). "BOOK: AI Strategy, by Bernard Marr". CIR Magazine.
- WWSG. (2026). "Niall Ferguson: AI Is the Most Dangerous Arms Race in History". WWSG.
- CEIBS. (2025). "Kevin Kelly: The uncertain future of AI" (keynote on 2049: Possibilities of the Next 10,000 Days). CEIBS.
- Leonhard, G. (2026). "The rise of Super-Stupidity, the End of Solitude and more: Impact of AI — Elon University 2026 Report". FuturistGerd.com.