Foom
A one-day simulation of governing AI development, played by the people who will have to do it for real.
Users, developers, business, policymakers and activists share a single throttle. Every round they decide how hard to pull, and every round it gets harder to change course.
How it runs
The Full Day
One room, five teams, twelve to thirty people, ten till four. Eight rounds, a world that responds to every decision, and a proper debrief at the end.
Event Demo
A conference stand. Twenty minutes a group, eight groups across a day, one line that never resets — each group inherits what the last one left.
Your Domain
Built for your sector and your part of the world: your regulators, your institutions, the pressures your teams already argue about.
What happens in the room
Each table gets a brief and a position to defend. Every round they read the news, debate across the room, and vote: stop it, regulate it, or let it carry on. Decision impacts are weighed, AI progress annoumced, and the world reacts to what they decided — the headlines between rounds are written from the votes just cast.
What you leave with
A written record of every round: who decided which way, who carried each decision, what alliances emerged and which ones held, and where the room's objectives and its actual choices diverged. Most teams are still debating their choices round six months on.
Scott Smith and Susan Cox-Smith talk about Foom with In Clear Focus
Foom (noun)
A hypothetical rapid acceleration in artificial intelligence capabilities, where an AI swiftly surpasses human intelligence and recursively improves itself beyond control.
A strategic simulation modeling AI development and governance challenges, designed to cultivate foresight and critical decision-making in high-stakes futures.
What Foom means
What participants say
"Foom gave me a much deeper understanding of the challenges AGI presents, while offering a rare opportunity to connect with peers who are equally invested in the future of AI."
— Coordinator, Government AI Working Group
"Foom was a magnificent strategic simulation of the interaction within groups and between groups, using the five rounds perfectly to bring a sense of real peril to each decision and encourage deep conversation beyond the gameplay."
— Tech Critic, Large Media Organisation
"Working with the team to imagine plausible tensions for the workshop is a really interesting way to examine the pressures on our teams."
— Foresight Strategist, Large Media Organization
Foom @ FACT, ACMI, Melbourne AU