Independent · Nonprofit · Est. 2026

Institutions are meeting four transitions at once with structures built for one.

We call it compound transition: technological, human, planetary, and geopolitical change arriving together rather than in sequence. Almost no institution is organized to see more than one of them at a time.

Horizon Search Institute is an independent nonprofit studying that convergence across four connected pillars, and turning it into original research, public-interest tools, and private convenings for leaders making consequential decisions under uncertainty.

Explore the research → Partner with HSI → or support the Institute
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Latest · Horizon Scan
AI Governance in Regulated Industries
Our inaugural quarterly scan, on financial services and healthcare.
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New · Research Brief
The Crumple Zone: Accountability When AI Agents Act on Their Own
On human-in-the-loop oversight in financial services, and what actually closes the gap.
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Convening · New York
The Inaugural HSI Salon
June 9, 2026 · a private convening of practitioners, scholars, policymakers, and institutional leaders.
The Category We Study

Compound transition.

The term

The condition in which technological, human, planetary, and geopolitical change stop arriving in sequence and begin arriving together, so that an institution’s response to any one of them constrains its response to the rest.

The individual shifts are each well studied. Their interaction is not, and the interaction is what breaks institutions.

Most organizations were built for slower, more separable change, with a function assigned to each kind. Today AI capability, workforce disruption, planetary constraints, and geopolitical fragmentation move against one another, and the seams between those functions are where the failures land. HSI studies those interactions and the choices they create or foreclose.

Our purpose is not forecasting for its own sake. It is to help institutions remain capable, legitimate, and humane through the transitions ahead.

The architecture we build now is the architecture we inherit.

The four questions we apply across every project
01

What is changing?

The signal beneath the news: capability shifts, regulatory movement, and structural change that has not yet been named.

02

What does it require of people?

The capability, judgment, and agency the change demands, and whether people are being equipped to supply it.

03

How must institutions adapt or coordinate?

What has to change inside organizations, and what has to be negotiated between them and across borders.

04

What future possibilities do today's choices preserve or foreclose?

The decisions whose consequences compound, and the optionality they either protect or quietly spend.

The Four Pillars

One question, examined at four levels.

Each project has one primary pillar and draws on the others where technology, people, institutions, and long-horizon systems interact. The connections are often where the most consequential questions emerge.

Pillar I

Responsible AI

AI and Emerging Technology Governance

How institutions govern AI and adjacent technologies as systems become more autonomous, adaptive, and embedded in consequential decisions.
Pillar II

Human Performance

Human Capability Across the Life Course

How people build, retain, and redeploy capability across education, entry into work, leadership, career transition, and longer lives.
Pillar III

Planetary Futures

Energy, Climate, Space and Long-Horizon Stewardship

How institutions steward the systems long-term human flourishing depends on, across climate, energy, infrastructure, the biosphere, and space.
Pillar IV

Governance & Diplomacy

Networked Governance and Track II Dialogue

How governments, companies, and multilateral institutions coordinate when authority is fragmented and problems cross borders faster than institutions can respond.
Explore the pillars →
Publications

Original research, on a layered cadence.

HSI Searchlight each week, single-topic Research Briefs each month, landscape Horizon Scans each quarter, and the HSI Outlook, which synthesizes the year across all four pillars.

Figure from Horizon Scan 001: AI risks organizations consider relevant versus those they actively mitigate, across roughly 500 organizations surveyed in 2025.
Inaugural Horizon Scan · May 2026

AI Governance in Regulated Industries

Lifecycle accountability and the institutional gap in financial services and healthcare.

AuthorsCynthia Chen & Ashwin Telang
Read the Scan → Download PDF ↓
On the agenda now
The full research agenda → All publications →
Our Standard

Each Searchlight ends with the test that would break its own claim.

Forecasting is cheap because it is rarely scored. The Verification Test states the claim plainly, the evidence that would confirm it, and the result that should make you stop believing us. We publish the failure condition before we know the answer, in the weekly briefing, where claims are made fastest and checked least.

An example · Searchlight No. 021
Claim under test

Regulators are moving to require platforms to pay publishers for AI-generated search summaries as a use in its own right, over and above payment for training and indexing.

Pass criteria

A formal investigation opens, or interim measures land on Google tied specifically to generative summarization, on roughly the timeline the Meta order took.

Fail smell

The Autorité treats the complaint as already covered by the 2022 commitments and creates no new obligation, which would suggest generative summarization is not yet a distinct licensable use in the EU framework.

See how the test is applied each week →
Salons & Convenings

Where the research meets the people who use it.

Three anchor-city salons each year, in New York, London, and Tokyo. By invitation only, held under the Chatham House Rule, and designed for candor among practitioners, scholars, policymakers, and institutional leaders.

Guests seated at the long table during the inaugural HSI salon
Completed
New York
June 9, 2026
House of the Redeemer · Responsible AI · Horizon Scan 001
Senior leaders from finance, healthcare, law, government, the UN system, and academia, convened under the Chatham House Rule to test Horizon Scan 001 against the judgment of people who run regulated institutions. Read the recap →
London
Confirmed · Scheduled
London
October 7, 2026
Autumn Salon · Governance & Diplomacy · Horizon Scan 002
An evening dinner for senior governance practitioners, regulators, and HSI patrons in the week of the 4th Annual AI Regulation Summit, built around Horizon Scan 002 and where governance language acquires enforceable cost. Details →
Tokyo
In development
Tokyo
February 2027
Asia Anchor Salon · Governance & Diplomacy · Horizon Scan 003
Cross-Pacific dialogue on the industrial instruments of AI governance: compute, energy, export controls, and standards. Framed by Horizon Scan 003, developed with Japanese policy and academic partners through 2026. Details →
In the Press
South Asian Herald HSI Convenes Inaugural New York Salon on AI Governance as Competitive Advantage American Bazaar Horizon Search Institute Debuts AI Governance Salon in New York
About the salon program → Leadership and governance →
Work With the Institute

Two ways to build the research with us.

HSI is accepting institutional partners and founding patrons for the 2026 research cycle. Both share in the work, not in its conclusions.

Partnership

Institutional partners

Research and co-publication, field access, academic collaboration, convening, and foundation funding. Partners bring questions, data, and settings the Institute could not reach alone.

Partnership does not confer control over findings.

How partnership works →
Patronage

Founding Patrons

Founding Patrons make the whole of HSI possible: research across the four pillars, the tools we publish free, and the salons that bring it together. Patrons receive advance access to each publication, an annual letter from the Executive Director, and salon invitations.

Recognition in published research, subject to your preference.

Inquire about patronage →
Research Independence

Partners, patrons, and funders support the mission and the pillars, but do not direct research conclusions, review work before publication, or receive editorial input. Contributions of $25,000 or more are disclosed in the HSI Outlook, and funding from foreign government or state-linked entities is reviewed and disclosed regardless of size. The full disclosure and fiscal-sponsorship policy is here.