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XPrize’s Peter Diamandis Funds Films to Challenge Hollywood’s Dystopian Narrative

Diamandis hopes a multimillion-dollar film prize can counter dystopian A.I. narratives with inspiring visions of what technology could make possible.

As a child growing up in the 1960s, Peter Diamandis’s world changed when he began watching Star Trek. The sci-fi show’s utopian vision inspired him to launch companies in health, space and education and to create ambitious competitions through his XPrize Foundation. Today, he believes pop culture has swung too far in the other direction. These days, however, media portrayals of technology’s potential are decidedly more bleak. “All the films we’ve seen from Hollywood over the last couple of decades, from Terminator to Ex Machina to Black Mirror, are all painting dystopian pictures of the future,” Diamandis told Observer. “If that’s people’s vision of the future, why would you want to live there?”

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