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As any \u201cStar Trek\u201d fan will tell you, the reason why this sci fi world has endured for so long is because it illustrates an optimistic future, with tech starring as a power for good.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In fact, famed XPrize founder, author, tech investor, motivational speaker and longevity guru Peter Diamandis has just launched a new $3.5 million Future Vision Xprize<\/a> to encourage more such optimistic sci-fi worlds to come to our screens.\u00a0<\/p>\n He credits his whole fabulous career to watching \u201cStar Trek\u201d as a child growing up.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c\u2019Star Trek\u2019 offered a hopeful vision of the future, right? It was humans\/humanity and technology in collaboration,\u201d Diamandis told TechCrunch. \u201cI truly credit it with everything that I since achieved, because it motivated me to want to go and create and manifest that future.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He finds that sci-fi movies and TV shows these days are largely fixated on calamity.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery science fiction movie I was seeing painted this dystopian vision of the future. It was always, everything is going wrong, and it\u2019s a result of technology. You know, killer robots, dystopian AIs. It\u2019s \u2018Black Mirror\u2019. It\u2019s \u2018Terminator\u2019. It\u2019s \u2018Ex Machina,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWhy would you ever want to live in that future?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n So he called up his friends Rod Roddenberry, son of \u201cStar Trek\u201d creator Gene Roddenberry, billionaire Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, famed investor and CEO of Ark Cathie Wood, and his buddies at Google. They all agreed to sponsor the new XPrize Future Vision.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA<\/span> It\u2019s a contest to encourage film creators to tell more stories about how good things can be in a technological future. Diamandis believes that if we see that, we will build it.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, there\u2019s a huge amount of growing uncertainty in people\u2019s lives. Will my kids have a job? Will I have a job?\u201d he said. The speed of change makes it hard for people to envision their futures, especially when clobbered with \u201cnegative stories about tomorrow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Another truth exists, too, Diamandis says. As a person standing at the corner of AI and longevity he knows that it\u2019s never been easier for anyone with an idea to pursue it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe most powerful tools on the planet are free and available to everybody,\u201d he said, referring to consumer AI models from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and others. \u201cI mean, that\u2019s honestly incredible, right? \u2026 We have democratized and demonetized the ability for people to solve problems.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Take longevity, for instance, the study of living longer as well as healthier as we age.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAI is enabling us to understand what\u2019s going on in our 40 trillion human cells,\u201d he said. (Diamandis, along with Tony Robbins, is a co-founder of longevity health tech Fountain Life<\/a>.)\u00a0He wants to see more of this kind of future on screen.\u00a0<\/p>\n Interesting, while he encourages the contestants to use AI tools for their projects, Diamandis warns that AI slop \u2014 fully AI-written and produced submissions \u2014 probably won\u2019t win.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want an AI generated-script and an AI-generated film without the human,\u201d he advises. \u201cThe humanity of it all is really important.\u201d <\/p>\n In fact, the Future Vision XPrize is being conducted with help of the 100 ZEROS initiative<\/a>. That\u2019s a partnership between Google and production company Range Media Partners. It works with filmmakers to produce tech-inspired stories using Google tools. (Google has a video generation model called Veo, for instance, and a video creation tool called Flow<\/a>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Submissions open March 9, close August 15, with winners announced September 25.\u00a0Each applicant will submit a three-minute trailer. Diamandis expects to \u201cflood\u201d YouTube with these submissions, allowing anyone to view and comment. Judges, led by the team at Range Media, will cull those submissions into a handful that receive funding to produce a 10-minute short.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The grand prize winner will be selected from the short films, receiving $2.5 million in production funding towards developing a feature film and $100,000 cash prize. The winning project is also expected to be featured on crowdsourcing site Republic Film, to help it raise an additional $5 million to $10 million for its production budget.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Diamandis says that members of his Abundance community of CEOs that he mentors have also opened their wallets. About 15 of them have contributed nearly half the prize money, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n In addition, other key donors include Andreessen Horowitz\u2019s Ben Horowitz, Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb and actor producer Seth Green.<\/p>\n Diamandis hopes that this becomes a repeated contest. He wants to turn dread into what he calls \u201can exponential mindset.\u201d That means \u201chaving agency, where you feel like the future is not happening to you, that the future is happening for you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n