Funders Must Rethink How to Lead Through Tech-Inflected Uncertainty

(Michelle Shevin, Charley Johnson – Tech Policy Press) 2025 forced leaders in public interest technology to confront what has always been true: uncertainty is unavoidable. Political upheaval, climate instability, and technological “disruption” all point in the same direction: we are in a moment of rapid and unpredictable change. Philanthropic leaders, especially those focused on tech policy, feel this acutely. They work in complex, evolving systems but rely on tools and practices designed for certainty and control. The craft of making grants — including the practices and tools funders use to develop strategies, shape proposals, and measure impact — is dominated by if-then thinking, causal theories of change, fixed goals, long-term planning, discrete measurement, and attempts to catalogue ‘what happened’ and assess ‘impact.’. Artificial intelligence complicates this dynamic further. Companies are selling the narrative that AI is “changing everything” so that their solution — all-purpose answer machines — hits the mark. But generative AI tools don’t manage uncertainty, they collapse uncertainty and complexity into a neat interface. The answer offered is a flattened facsimile of reality. Generative AI as it is currently configured only obscures uncertainty and plays into our human desire for control. This is the challenge philanthropic leaders — and, indeed, the broader public interest technology community — must confront at this moment: how to adapt amidst uncertainty in an organizational context that doesn’t tolerate it, and within a broader system that makes it harder to see clearly. We propose that public interest technology leaders should stop viewing uncertainty as a problem to solve and instead see it as a reality to navigate in relationship with one another. This requires a mindset shift —from an if-then approach that presumes control and predictability to one that embraces uncertainty, adaptivity, and attunement. And, it requires a more strategic shift that we characterize within philanthropy as an evolution from grant craft to systems craft. Ultimately, this moment requires leaders to build what we and others call relational infrastructure — with one another and the organizations and communities they support — to sense, act, and adapt together. We focus here on philanthropic leaders because their decisions significantly impact the choices organizations can make and the approaches they can pursue, but much of the below applies to organizations stewarding responsible and public interest technology, and technology policy more broadly. – Funders Must Rethink How to Lead Through Tech-Inflected Uncertainty | TechPolicy.Press