Change by Foresight: AI for the Common Good. Algophobia, celibate machines, and FINNA as a grammar of possible futures in Public Administration

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) governance in public administration is increasingly shaped by dominant narratives that frame the future as predictable, manageable, and technologically inevitable. Such narratives tend to depoliticise AI by translating normative choices into technical optimisation problems, producing forms of anticipatory closure. This contribution interrogates AI governance as a narrative and temporal issue rather than a purely regulatory or ethical one. Drawing on narrative policy analysis and a participatory action research laboratory with public officials of the Metropolitan City of Rome, it examines how anticipatory practices can destabilise deterministic imaginaries and reopen the space of possible futures. The Change by Foresight Lab mobilises a hybrid assemblage of foresight and participatory methods to surface situated orientations toward AI, revealing tensions between efficiency, legitimacy, and democratic accountability. Building on these findings, the contribution introduces FINNA as a conceptual lens to interpret how anticipatory practices enable public administrations to articulate futures that remain open, negotiable, and collectively oriented.