As any Star Trek fan will tell you, the reason this sci-fi world has endured so long is because it envisions an optimistic future in which technology takes center stage as a force for good.
In fact, renowned XPrize founder, author, tech investor, motivational speaker, and longevity guru Peter Diamandis has just launched a new $3.5 million Future Vision Xprize to encourage more such optimistic sci-fi worlds to come to our screens.
He credits his entire amazing career to watching Star Trek as a kid.
“Star Trek offered a hopeful vision of the future, right? It was about humans and humanity and technology working together,” Diamandis told TechCrunch. “I truly believe that everything I have achieved since then is because of this, because it motivated me to create and realize that future.”
He noticed that most recent science fiction movies and TV shows focused on disasters.
“All the sci-fi movies I was watching had this vision of a dystopian future, where everything is always going wrong, and it's the result of technology. You know, killer robots, dystopian AI. It's 'Black Mirror.' It's 'Terminator.' It's 'Ex Machina,'” he said. “Why would you want to live in that future?”
So he called his friend Rod Roddenberry (son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry), billionaire Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, prominent investor and Arc CEO Cathie Wood, and colleagues at Google. They all agreed to sponsor the new XPrize Future Vision.
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This is a contest that encourages film creators to tell more stories about how great the future of technology will be. Diamandis believes that if you can see it, you can build it.
“There's so much uncertainty in people's lives right now. Will my kids be able to find a job? Will I be able to find a job?” he said. The speed of change makes it difficult for people to envision their future, especially when there is so much negative talk about tomorrow.
Another truth exists, Diamandis says. As someone who stands at the intersection of AI and longevity, he knows it's never been easier for people with an idea to pursue it.
“The most powerful tools on the planet are free and available to everyone,” he said, referring to consumer AI models from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and others. “I mean, that's honestly incredible, right? … We've democratized and demonetized people's ability to solve problems.”
For example, consider longevity. Research shows that as we age, we can live longer and healthier lives.
“AI now allows us to understand what is happening in the 40 trillion cells of a human being,” he said. (Diamandis is co-founder, along with Tony Robbins, of longevity medical technology Fountain Life.) He wants to see more of this kind of future on screen.
What's interesting is that while Diamandis encourages contestants to use AI tools in their projects, he warns that AI slops, or submissions written and produced entirely in AI, likely won't win.
“You don’t want an AI-generated script or an AI-generated movie with no humans in it,” he advises. “The humanity is so important in everything.”
In fact, the Future Vision XPrize is supported by the 100 ZEROS initiative. This is a partnership between Google and production company Range Media Partners. We work with filmmakers to create stories inspired by technology using Google's tools. (For example, Google has a video generation model called Veo and a video creation tool called Flow.)
Entries will open on March 9th, close on August 15th, and winners will be announced on September 25th. Each entrant will submit a 3-minute trailer. Diamandis wants to “flood” YouTube with these posts, where anyone can view and comment on them. A panel of judges, led by the team at Range Media, will select a small number of submissions to receive funding to create a 10-minute short film.
The grand prize winner will be selected from a pool of short films and will receive $2.5 million in production funding and a $100,000 cash prize toward the development of a feature film. The winning project will also be featured on crowdsourcing site Republic Film and is expected to raise between $5 million and $10 million for additional production funding.
Diamandis says members of the CEO Abundance community he mentors are also opening their wallets. About 15 of them donated nearly half of their prize money.
Additionally, other major donors include Andreessen Horowitz's Ben Horowitz, Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb, and actor-producer Seth Green.
Diamandis hopes this becomes a repeat competition. He wants to transform fear into what he calls “exponential thinking.” He says that means “having the independence to feel that the future is happening to you, rather than the future happening to you.”