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The Future According to FiRe By Berit Anderson _____ Why Read: To help you strategically navigate that change; to ride the highs and avoid the lows - in this special issue, we're giving SNS members the first look at the videos of all our Future in Review 2023 sessions. We encourage you to watch and, as we do on rare occasions, to share freely. _____
The future for humans has never been more in flux. The rate of technological change is accelerating, transforming the fundamentals of the global economy at a time of great international political instability. A few weeks ago, Elon estimated that artificial general intelligence (AGI) is less than three years away. That's perhaps unlikely; in the business of patterns, Elon is notoriously bad at calling time scales accurately. (In 2016, he predicted Tesla would have a fully autonomous vehicle the following year.) There are significant hurdles to AGI - but the volume of time and capital being applied to the problem indicates that it will still arrive on a relatively short human time scale. (One decade? Two?) Meanwhile, its approach and eventual arrival will continue to disrupt the economic model we depend on to fuel our lives and livelihoods. New ideas and iterations will be needed that go beyond trickle-down economics and universal basic income. Already, the non-tech world is frustrated by the impacts of large language models (LLMs) and robotics on business decisions and the way these decisions filter down to the economic realities of the average worker. Nvidia president Jensen Huang is using AI to design his AI chips and has predicted an entire reinvention of the world's computing interface. Google, Facebook, OpenAI, and Microsoft are rushing to turn LLMs into the operating system of our next generation of computing. Will the interface be a Neuralink? Will it be a Naqi Logix earbud? Will it be a Humane AIPin? Will it be a pair of Rayban Meta-Smarts? These are just a few of the questions the tech world is spinning out on X these days - an intellectual ouroboros of VCs and their portfolio companies retweeting one another. Much of the media and creative economy has already transitioned to platforms owned by ByteDance (China) and Meta. On Threads, journalists disparage X/Twitter and desperately seek out other journalists. They are trying to rebuild a global information network - apparently forgetting that Meta convinced news media to shift their entire publishing strategy to Facebook before throttling news companies' access to their own subscribers. Around the world, the climate emergency is demolishing homes and businesses, burning or flooding entire towns, shifting bands of arable land to the north and south - a pattern that is creating more food instability and affecting world migration patterns. Global fish stocks are at risk as the ocean continues to warm and its acidity increases. (Accordingly, companies such as Wildtype - whose CTO spoke at FiRe 2022 - may suddenly become even more relevant.) The alliance between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea (CRINK) continues to wreak havoc and drive international conflict, from Ukraine to the South China Sea to Israel and Palestine. But amid all of this, there is also optimism and opportunity. As Evan Anderson and Eli Aranoff Spencer noted in their report earlier this week, these global patterns are at once increasingly volatile and increasingly well-tracked, surveilled by a network of terrestrial and interstellar sensors. The more data we have about the impact of our technologies on society, the better we can implement them and the more likely we are to avoid negative externalities. On the positive side:
In the coming years, we will all be required to upscale our intelligence and our learning processes about new technologies; to think collectively about earth, economic, and social systems and the feedback cycles they create between one another. Those who attended this year's FiRe conference took part in conversations about many, if not most, of these topics. And many of you have asked for videos of this or that session to share with colleagues, friends, and family members. So in this special issue, to help boost your advantage even more, we're providing all SNS members with full access to all Future in Review 2023 videos.
We encourage you to watch these videos, to share them with your friends and family members, and to use them as a collective language for assessing the future. And, speaking of the future, I would be remiss not to mention that this is the final week of Early Bird pricing for FiRe 2024, which will return to the Terranea resort in Palos Verdes, California, October 20-23. Tickets are discounted by $2k below standard pricing through this Friday, December 8. (For close observers of FiRe dates, next year's conference will kick off on a Sunday evening and run through Wednesday afternoon - a departure from this year's Monday-Thursday schedule.) As Adam Tachner, Groq's VP of Corporate Development, wrote to us about FiRe 2023: "Terrific conference and conversations. I met fascinating people at every session, and I'm looking forward to deriving insights from many valuable new relationships." I hope you'll join us.
Your comments are always welcome.
Sincerely, Berit Anderson _____ We encourage you to forward your favorite issues of SNS to a friend(s) or colleague(s) 1 time per recipient, provided that you cc info@strategicnewsservice.com and that sharing does not result in the publication of the SNS Global Report or its contents in any form except as provided in the SNS Terms of Service (linked below). To arrange for a speech or consultation by Mark Anderson on subjects in technology and economics, or to schedule a strategic review of your company, email mark@stratnews.com. For inquiries about Partnership or Sponsorship Opportunities and/or SNS Events, please contact Berit Anderson, SNS COO, at berit@stratnews.com.
RE: FUTURE IN REVIEW 2023 Subject: FW: WSJ Climate & Energy: Inevitable Berit, Who is this guy kidding?? Should someone on the [FiRe CTO Challenge] climate team draft a response? Should you set up a debate between him and one of the members of our climate team for a webcast?? A Surprisingly Bright Climate ForecastBy Ed BallardAction by regulators, aided by consumer-goods companies shunning palm oil linked to deforestation, are credited with dramatically slowing Indonesia's rate of forest loss. News about global warming often presents a world doing little to limit the damage. One of the world's most prominent investors aims to profit by taking a different view. Take two new United Nations reports. One said governments plan to extract double the amount of fossil fuels that we can burn while keeping temperatures at relatively safe levels. The other surveyed national climate plans and found they're "severely off track. [. . .]" Assuming that governments will sit on their hands may not be a safe bet. Some investors are peering into a crystal ball called the Inevitable Policy Response for a different view of the future. Devised by a U.N. affiliate as a navigation aid for the energy transition, the IPR is a ground-up assessment of what governments may do, based on policies that are enacted or in the works and experts' opinions on how policy could develop. It presents a future in which action accelerates as extreme weather bites, voters demand action and green technologies improve. It doesn't say the process will be smooth or orderly. Out of 215 key policies IPR has been tracking across two dozen major economies since 2021, it found 17 examples of backsliding and 41 of action speeding up by June this year, with the rest unchanged. The IPR's best guess is that we're heading for 1.8 degrees of warming by 2100. That's more than the 1.5 degrees target embraced by governments, but better than many other forecasts. Jakob Thoma, who oversees the project, says breakthroughs like the Biden administration's low-carbon tax breaks and Indonesia's efforts to curb deforestation are underappreciated. Among the investors using this guide is Temasek, the Singaporean state investment company with a portfolio valued above $280 billion. Kyung-Ah Park, managing director of ESG investment management at Temasek, said the forecast helps the firm understand how its investments could be affected by climate policies, for instance by helping model the impact of Europe's carbon border tax. Temasek's portfolio, like those of other giant investors, largely runs on fossil fuels. It owns a natural-gas supplier, Pavilion Energy, and a majority stake in Singapore Airlines. Park said the firm is pushing companies in its portfolio to prepare for a rapid transition. Energy and infrastructure group Sembcorp Industries, for example, just said it will invest nearly $8 billion in a shift to renewables. Temasek is also a big investor in early-stage green technologies. Whether sustainable aviation fuel and low-carbon steel turn out to be winners is to be determined, but they are, in part, bets on government support. "People forget that the cost of inaction is much more massive than the cost of taking action," Park said. The IPR hasn't been tracking policies for long, and it will be tested. Talk of a one-way regulation train may sound less reasonable if the next U.S. president dismantles Biden administration clean-tech programs, or if the successor to Brazil's President Lula sanctions more Amazon deforestation. On the other hand, extreme weather is already costing the U.S. $150 billion a year, according to a government report published Tuesday. Park predicted that the worsening impacts of climate change will mean that despite inevitable flip-flops, climate policy gathers force. "It is inevitable," she said. This is just so naive. I call this kind of stuff "dream-washing" because it goes so far past green-washing!! Cheers, John Mattison Scholar-in-Residence for AI and Advanced Technologies
John (cc: Sally), I, for one, would welcome a debate. Good climate policy is not inevitable. Nor is its implementation. Brings to mind a Wendell Berry quote I appreciate: " Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do." Berit Anderson - And: Great quote!! I'm increasingly worried by the enthusiasm for nuclear fusion. I've strongly supported nuclear fusion research since I was an environmental studies major at UC Santa Cruz (go banana slugs!!!). However, there is a clear moral hazard of people saying, "Oh, we don't have to worry, fusion will solve our energy problems soon," and then the Sultan of Dubai can say there's no science we need to reduce fossil fuel consumption at COPP this week. The three of us and the whole CTO challenge team know that if we stopped 100% of fossil fuel today, and magically shifted to nuclear fusion, global warming would continue for decades ahead. The convenient strategy of saying, "Oh, don't worry, help is on the way" only justifies the fossil fuel industry to keep pumping while the price/barrel remains high . John
Subject: Re: Japanese Scientists Reinvent Fuel Cells With Graphene Breakthrough Very cool. Perhaps a worthy topic for next year's FiRe: Founder, Santa Barbara Angel Alliance,
John, Very interesting; thanks, John, and good seeing you again. - And You're welcome, Mark. It was great to have FiRe back in person again. It makes such an incredible difference connecting with really smart and big-hearted people, when you're face-to-face with them.
By the way, I spent a good deal of time talking, and getting to know a lot better, Ragnar Kruse. I feel very strongly that he would make an incredible FiRe Advisory Board member. He's not just smart, but he is a very deep thinker, highly logical, and he really cares about the success of the conference. My gut doesn't always scream at me for certain things, but it is for this one. John
John, I see you've discovered the human wonder that is Ragnar Kruse. I agree with your assessment completely. Berit Anderson
Subject: Connecting post-FiRe Berit, So great meeting you and getting the opportunity to chat briefly at the FiRe conference - what an amazing week of incredible sessions! Would love to coordinate our calendars for a coffee or lunch meetup in Seattle sometime. Founder and Principal
Mia, Thank you so much for joining us this year. Copying my EA, who can help us find a time to connect further. And very much looking forward to future collaboration to make FiRe 2024 even better. Berit Anderson
* On December 10-12, Mark will be at the Fortune Brainstorm AI Conference in San Francisco. * On December 13 and 20, he will be presenting at Keiretsu Forum Mid-Atlantic. * On January 8-11, he'll be at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco.
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