Who's In This Podcast
Helen Todd is co-founder and CEO of Sociality Squared and the human behind Creativity Squared.
Sam Jordan is the manager at Future Today Institute and a futurist on a mission to spread “plausible optimism.”
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Ep50. Agency in the Age of A.I.: Glimpse into a Resilient Future with Sam Jordan, Author of Future Today Institute’s 2024 Tech Trend Report on A.I., Computing, and Space
Author Ray Bradbury described sci-fi as the most important literature in the world because it’s “the history of ideas, the history of civilization birthing itself.” For instance, technology envisioned more than 50 years ago, like the smart home and the metaverse in Bradbury’s “The Veldt,” is now becoming a reality.
With powerful A.I. systems now accelerating innovation, it seems like we are witnessing a critical chapter being written in civilization’s history while trying to avoid the tragedies that Bradbury’s characters suffered.
Few understand that dynamic better than Sam Jordan, our guest for the 50th episode of Creativity Squared. Sam is a sci-fi aficionado and a data-based strategic foresight expert who helps companies and the public anticipate what they’ll encounter on the path to progress.
Sam is a futurist on a mission to spread “plausible optimism.” She’s a Manager and Lead of Computing and Advanced Technology Practices at Future Today Institute (FTI), the strategic advisory agency founded by renowned futurist Amy Webb who presents her equally famous South By Southwest (SXSW) Emerging Tech Trends Report keynote. Sam also authored the Future Today Institute’s 2024 Tech Trend Report on the metaverse, computing, and space in addition to co-writing the A.I. book in collaboration with Amy Webb.
Sam was previously CEO of TrovBase, a secure data discovery platform she co-founded after working for IBM modernizing IT systems. Sam holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Data Analysis from George Mason University and an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business, where she met Amy Webb.
Sam shares insights with us on how the convergence of three emerging technologies is fueling a self-perpetuating tech “supercycle” of investment and innovation, expanding on and diving deeper into Amy Webb’s 2024 SXSW keynote and FTI’s 2024 Tech Trend Report. We also discuss the consolidation of power in tech, the importance of resilience, and the need for experimentation during this transitionary period.
She also demonstrates some of the strategic forecasting FTI is known for, breaking down how emerging technologies like organoid intelligence and robotics can impact the economy, public policy, and social norms.
We also dive into fascinating trends like using human brain cells to power chips, universal basic income to address the social safety net, and the importance of human purpose and meaning during this seismic change. Sam also shares her favorite sci-fi influences and emphasizes the power of storytelling and scenario planning to shape the future.
How do we keep our agency in the age of A.I.? Check out Episode 50 and keep reading to find out!
Trend Report And Supercycle Tech Trinity
The Future Today Institute is a for-profit strategic advisory firm that helps companies figure out where they should play in the future, how they can win in the future, and how to build resiliency. Using a methodology of strategic forecasting pioneered by Amy Webb, FTI separates hype and passing fads from the pitfalls and opportunities that companies should actually be monitoring.
As a lifelong fan of sci-fi, Sam says she has her dream job at FTI, writing evidence-backed strategic plans for scenarios like deepfaked natural disasters that could fit just as well in the plot of a sci-fi novel.
“My background was in economics, I love sci-fi…I love logical arguments, and all of that combined is the skill set that you need to do strategic foresight.”
Sam Jordan
Every year, FTI publishes a comprehensive report tracking hundreds of tech and science trends across multiple sectors. The report includes countless examples of how each trend could play out in the future.
This year’s 17th Annual Tech Trends Report (available for free download) tracks 700 trends across 16 verticals, identifying the critical uncertainties facing decision-makers and fleshing out the potential scenarios that could unfold. Sam is personally responsible for writing the Future of Computing, Future of the Metaverse, and Future of Space books. With so much to cover this year, she also helped Amy produce the report’s headline sector on the future of artificial intelligence.
The report’s theme focuses on the convergence of three broad tech trends into what FTI is calling a tech Supercycle, defined as “an extended period of booming demand, elevating the prices of commodities and assets to unprecedented heights.” What makes a supercycle so super is that it can stretch across years or decades, driven by substantial and sustained structural changes in the economy.
The pieces of the tech trinity driving this supercycle are artificial intelligence, biotech, and the connected Internet of Things—the constellation of sensors and wearable tech constantly collecting our data. The three feed into and off of one another, making them each stronger.
A.I. systems constantly need more data to improve. Wearables and sensors are constantly contributing health and other data to privately controlled tech companies. At the same time, we’re increasingly using A.I. to interface with our devices, incentivizing companies to make A.I. more powerful and useful. Health data from wearables is unlocking new biotech innovations with the help of A.I. analysis. The quest for more advanced medicines and the promise of more accurate personal health monitoring drives A.I. development even further.
“These three general-purpose technologies are increasingly intertwined. They serve as inputs to each other, but also, as these areas individually improve, they lift up the other technologies. This has created a flywheel of value.”
Sam Jordan
Sam says that this phenomenon is boosting fledgling markets and creating entirely new ones, enticing investors and tech speculators. More capital means attracting more talent from academia, which leads to more innovation. More innovation means more consumer value, which attracts more funding, and so on.
According to Sam, one effect of this supercycle is time compression in planning for the future. Even working with companies that generate billions in revenue and employ tens of thousands of people, FTI has seen planning timeframes for many of its clients shorten from ten years to two years or less.
Yet, FTI likes to remind clients that not even the companies building emerging technology (which FTI also advises) have very long roadmaps for their technology.
“Everyone right now is feeling like they’re reacting. And when you’re reacting, you aren’t being strategic.”
Sam Jordan
Sam says that’s an advantage of FTI’s approach to strategic foresight; its methodologies for scenario planning can improve planning efforts over any time frame.
Sam says that companies’ internal planning efforts can often underestimate the depth and breadth of changes that affect business. Companies should consider uncertainties outside their immediate industry sector, such as how social factors, ethics, and values might change.
For example, declining birth rates in developed countries may not seem important for a tech startup building a social app. But if the population’s average age trends higher over time due to fewer young people, that could seriously impact the feature roadmap or even the company’s viability.
So even though the convergence of three major tech trends and the speed of innovation may make it harder to focus on what matters, Sam says that leaders and planners can still benefit from a systematic approach to plotting their course forward.
Forecasting Major Tech Trends with FTI
Silicon Chips Inspired By the Human Brain
Sci-fi is certainly becoming a reality, with some emerging trends highlighted, including chips. The key to unlocking greater computing power to meet the massive demands of modern technology is in the design and manufacturing of silicon chips.
Sam says that silicon chip builders are realizing that they can’t keep iterating on the same chip architecture that’s worked for the past 70 years because of a principle called the Von Neumann Bottleneck. Instead, chip designers are in a race to build “neuromorphic computing” chips that replicate the most efficient computer in the known universe: the human brain. These chips are built so data doesn’t have to move around in order to execute tasks. Just like our brain, information is stored and processed all in the same place.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University made another major breakthrough last year by publishing the world’s first demonstration of “organoid intelligence.”
Organoids are clumps of human cells (brain cells in this case), that scientists can train to run computations or store information. In the study, organoids learned to play a simple game of Pong. More recently, Indiana University researchers taught an organoid intelligence system to differentiate between 200 unique human voices.
Sam predicts that we’re still a long way away from any personal or commercial application for organoid intelligence, as the technology is very young and would be difficult to scale. Yet the demand for ever-more efficient computing will be a major trend over the next several years with significant implications for global financial markets, national security, and energy policy.
A.I. Reading, Writing, and Executing Our Thoughts
Tech companies aren’t just developing chips to replicate our brains, they’re developing systems (like Elon Musk’s Neuralink) to go into our brains.
A pair of Japanese scientists published a paper last year in which an A.I. model was able to roughly recreate an image in somebody’s mind just by analyzing fMRI images of the subject’s brain. But Sam says that A.I. can also write to our brains to change our mood, for example. She doesn’t think this trend of brain-computer interfacing (BCI) will stay confined to big labs with fMRI machines for too long.
“I think we’re going to start to see more technologies that you and I could purchase to be able to read and write to our brains with this tech.”
Sam Jordan
Yet she’s skeptical about whether people will actually want to embed a chip in their brain, or whether a successful consumer product would need to be removable. In order for that to work, though, a removable BCI device would have to overcome the poor electrical conductivity of our skulls.
At the end of the day, Sam predicts that most people will want to have a removable device so they can be absolutely certain that nobody is listening to their thoughts.
The Final Frontier and Growing Space Industry
Sam self-describes as a “space fangirl,” but as the commercial spaceflight industry develops, she believes that we need better stories about space (like our previous guest Yemi A.D. is planning to produce during his upcoming spaceflight).
“All of the ‘let’s get pumped for space’ content is ideally suited for people who are already pumped about space. So we need to figure out ways to bring other industries along.”
Sam Jordan
Sam sees opportunities for innovative manufacturing processes that are possible only in the vacuum of space. For instance, the pristine conditions in space would be a perfect environment for building semiconductors, which are highly sensitive to airborne contamination. While launch costs are still too high to make space manufacturing a feasible reality anytime soon, it’s an example of how space companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX can market the benefits of space and speed up the flywheel for innovation.
Space could unlock the production of three-dimensional intelligent organoids as well. Because of Earth’s gravity, organoids grown here can only grow two-dimensionally. Sam says companies like Varda are already working to produce organs and pharmaceutical compounds in space. But who’s going to be doing the work up there?
“Humans, unfortunately, are pretty vulnerable creatures…That said, I do think that, ultimately, human beings should go to other celestial bodies, not just our robot clones.”
Sam Jordan
This year’s space trend report also included a scenario about using the metaverse to interact with Mars remotely via robot avatar, which would allow us to prepare the red planet for our arrival. Sam predicts that robots will be the primary method of interacting with other celestial bodies (besides the moon).
Deepfakes Disrupting Trade and Society
A primary concern for FTI and its clients is understanding the potential for global disruptions like supply chain failures and civil unrest caused by coordinated deepfake campaigns. Sam predicts that deepfakes will become convincing enough within this year to be undetectable by our eyes alone. Of course, this is happening in a year set to break records for the number of elections happening around the world. Without standardized tools or labels to combat deepfake disinformation, Sam sees a recipe for disaster. One major concern isn’t just one deepfake, but whole events that could be deepfaked.
“This is the year that we are probably surpassing the uncanny valley. So our gut no longer tells us what is real and what is fake.”
Sam Jordan
FTI is gaming out hypothetical scenarios where a coordinated multimedia deepfake campaign deceives the public en masse. In Sam’s example, deepfaked news reports of a tsunami in Taiwan might include A.I.-generated satellite data as confirmation. Simultaneously, the deepfake victim might see similar reports via social media. The victim might make rash investment decisions as a result, wreaking havoc in the stock market if enough people are deceived. Such a deepfaked event could scare cargo operators to reroute international trade corridors.
Current events are one thing — what about entire historical events getting deepfaked by revisionists, extremists, or manipulative governments? Can we be sure that a particular historical event actually happened the way we think it did when there’s footage that shows otherwise? Sam says those risks are increasingly worrying US State Department officials — not just because of the supply chain impacts, but also the potential geopolitical and diplomatic risks.
Preserving Agency in the Face of Consolidating Power and Techno-Authoritarianism
During her keynote presentation at SXSW this year, Amy Webb said that one of the concerning aspects of the tech supercycle is how it’s concentrating power among a “dangerously” small group of people who have amassed wealth and influence by controlling how we communicate.
These people want to convince the world that they are “effective altruists” or “techno-optimists” building technology to save us all. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman summarized this attitude on a recent speaking tour, saying, “I don’t care if we burn $50 billion a year: we’re building AGI and it’s going to be worth it.”
Amy Webb uses a different term for it: “free market techno authoritarianism.” In her keynote, she said that we don’t need anyone to save us; we just need to do a better job planning for the future.
Inspired by Amy’s keynote, we asked Sam how we can all maintain our individual agency despite the overarching pressure to get on board the bullet train to the future.
Sam emphasizes that we must continually fight for agency. It’s a challenge, not something that can be maintained simply by staying informed, reading newsletters, or purchasing from certain companies.
Sam considers techno authoritarianism and free agency in the context of the biblical phrase, “the meek shall inherit the Earth.” She says that while those who don’t necessarily act on their desires may inherit the Earth, it will be an Earth shaped by the builders — the ones creating technology, founding startups, writing, and producing art.
“Go out and build something, go out and create something. Because that is how you have a tangible effect on how the world ends up.”
Sam Jordan
Sam tells clients that a pessimistic scenario is inevitable if the status quo is maintained. As technology advances and behaviors change, doing nothing will lead to a pessimistic outcome every time. On the other hand, optimism requires action. Listening to informative podcasts is a great start, but we still have to ask ourselves, “So what?” afterward. She says that learning without action is useless, but building and creating are essential to having a tangible impact on the world.
“Optimism is harder. Optimism requires you to do something.”
Sam Jordan
Yet Sam acknowledges that the skills required to build something now are not the same skills one will need in order to build in the future. She says that we need to invest in developing new approaches to education and upskilling efforts by experimenting and spreading best practices.
Universal Basic Income
But what if we can’t upskill fast enough? This week, we published a blog post about how A.I. and robotic automation could cause a chain reaction that starts with an unemployment crisis and ends with a bankrupt US Social Security system. In light of this, politicians and tech leaders are opening up to the idea of providing people with a universal basic income (UBI) regardless of how much they work. With a background in economics, we wanted to get Sam’s take on the policy.
Sam believes UBI should replace, not supplement, current systems. She said the upside of UBI is giving people the agency to spend money as they wish. Replacing many existing aid programs, like nutrition vouchers and unemployment benefits, with cash grants could empower more entrepreneurship and less reliance on benefits.
On the downside, Sam worries that UBI could diminish the meaning people derive from work. Work provides a purpose, and without it, she’s concerned there’s a risk of unintended consequences. The current crisis of meaning, where many struggle to find value in their work, might worsen if UBI widely replaces traditional employment.
While A.I. taking over certain jobs could benefit the economy, Sam believes that humans will still want to “work” in the sense that creating things is in our nature.
“I think that we are underestimating human creativity. There’s no limits to growth in what we can imagine ourselves creating.”
Sam Jordan
Sam suggests that we should experiment at the community or state levels to understand these risks before implementing a large-scale UBI program.
The Future Belongs to Builders
Between the tech supercycle, dystopian sci-fi technologies coming to life, techno authoritarians with their pedal to the metal, and the overall climate of uncertainty; FTI’s work in strategic forecasting is more important than ever — not just to prevent the worst-case scenario, but to cultivate the best possible scenarios.
“Thinking systematically about the future is important. You have to have a decision to be able to create a plan. And I think that we can do this not just with our companies, but also in our individual lives.”
Sam Jordan
As we navigate this transformative period, we need to hedge bright-eyed optimism with practical self-determinism, so that we aren’t chained to the dock when the tide comes in to lift all boats. While we as a society should experiment with creative solutions to address the potential consequences of the current supercycle, Sam encourages us all to start or continue building for ourselves — the tech titans nor will A.I. save us.
Links Mentioned in this Podcast
- Samantha Jordan at Future Today Institute
- Future Today Institute – Work
- Amy Webb at Future Today Institute
- How to Do Strategic Planning Like a Futurist – Harvard Business Review
- Future Today Institute – Trends
- Von Neumann Bottleneck – TechTarget
- Brain Cells Learn to Play Pong – NPR
- Brainware: Brain Organoid on a Chip – Popular Science
- AI Can Re-Create What You See from a Brain Scan – Scientific American
- This Artist Is Going to the Moon – Creativity Squared
- Varda Space Industries
- YouTube Video – South By Southwest (SXSW) Keynote by Amy Webb
- How Americans View Their Jobs – Pew Research
- Creativity Squared Ep 49 with Yemi A.D.
Continue the Conversation
Thank you, Sam, for joining us on this special episode of Creativity Squared.
This show is produced and made possible by the team at PLAY Audio Agency: https://playaudioagency.com.
Creativity Squared is brought to you by Sociality Squared, a social media agency who understands the magic of bringing people together around what they value and love: http://socialitysquared.com.
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TRANSCRIPT
Sam: The pessimistic scenario happens when you maintain the status quo as technology advances and as behaviors change. You will get a pessimistic scenario 10 out of 10 times if you change nothing. Optimism is harder because optimism requires you to do something.
Helen: For the 50th episode of Creativity Squared, we have Sam Jordan, a futurist on a mission to spread plausible optimism.
Helen: As a manager at Future Today Institute, she helps clients navigate and plan for unpredictable futures with certainty. Sam also wrote on computing, the metaverse, space, and AI and the 2024 Emerging Tech Trend Report released annually by the company’s renowned founder and CEO Amy Webb at her equally famous South by Southwest keynote with a background in economics and data science and a passion for sci-fi.
Helen: Sam found her dream job in strategic foresight, writing evidence based sci-fi to inform real world strategies. Previously, she was the CEO and co-founder of Trove Base. A secure data discovery platform. And before that, she worked at IBM modernizing IT systems. Sam holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and data analysis from George Mason University, and an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business, where she met Amy Webb.
Helen: As a huge fan of the Future Today Institute, and Amy’s South by Southwest keynotes. I couldn’t be more excited to have Sam on the show to give us a glimpse into the future and share practical insights on building resilience in this time of massive transition. In this episode, you’ll hear Sam’s insights on the convergence of AI, biotech, and connected ecosystems, creating a super cycle unlike any general purpose technology that we’ve seen before.
Helen: We discuss the consolidation of power in tech, the importance of resilience and the need for experimentation during this transitionary period. We also dive into fascinating trends like using human brain cells to power chips, universal basic income to address the social safety net and the importance of human purpose and meaning during this seismic change.
Helen: Sam also shares her favorite sci-fi influences and emphasizes the power of storytelling and scenario planning to shape the future. How do we keep our autonomy in the age of AI? Listen in to find out. Enjoy.
Helen: Welcome to Creativity Squared. Discover how creatives are collaborating with artificial intelligence in your inbox, on YouTube, and on your preferred podcast platform. Hi, I’m Helen Todd, your host, and I’m so excited to have you join the weekly conversations I’m having with amazing pioneers in the space.
Helen: The intention of these conversations is to ignite our collective imagination at the intersection of AI and creativity to envision a world where artists thrive.
Helen: Sam, welcome to Creativity Squared. It is so good to have you on the show.
Sam: Thanks, Helen. Great to be on the show.
Helen: I am such a big fan girl of the Future Today Institute. So it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show, especially since you are the foresight manager and head of computing and advanced technologies.
Helen: Everyone who has interacted with me knows I’m a huge fan of South by Southwest. And the one session that I have told everyone to watch is Amy Webb’s 2024 tech trends keynote. I have set it at our Cincy AI meet. I’ve put it in our newsletter. I’ve said it here. It’s on our blog. And Sam comes from the Future Today Institute.
Helen: So we’re going to get a bigger glimpse into the future and go over some of that trends report. So super, super excited to have you here today.
Sam: Yeah, same here. And thanks for all the advertising. Sounds like maybe we should put you on like marketing payroll.
Helen: We could talk afterwards.
Sam: Yeah.
Helen: For those who are meeting you for the first time can you share a bit of your origin story and introduce the Future Today Institute? Cause I know I’m familiar with the organization, but this might be the first time our viewers and listeners are hearing about it.
Sam: Yeah, absolutely. I’ll start with kind of my origin story and how I came to be at the Future Today Institute. So initially I came out of IBM. So I was working in the very exciting world of mainframes, which is IBM’s legacy system that sort of quietly and low-key powers the majority of the global financial system.
Sam: So I was working with clients in the distribution sector to try to modernize these legacy environments. So working with companies like CSX and Marriott and Kroger and Walmart. And after a few years there, I went on to get my master’s at NYU Stern. And that’s actually where I met Amy Webb. Amy Webb is the founder and CEO of Future Today Institute.
Sam: And she was teaching a class called Predicting the Future of Technology where she taught us about her methodology of how she predicts the future of technology which is a methodology called “strategic foresight” which is basically a disciplined approach to thinking strategically about the future.
Sam: And I’m sure we’ll talk about that later on in the interview. But really this work combined everything that I loved. So my background was in economics and data science. I love sci-fi. I actually went to college for speech and debate. So I love logical arguments, very logic and rational origin.
Sam: And all of that combined is the skillset that you need to do strategic foresight. So I was kind of like “Wow, this is a real job that people can have and get paid to do?” I get to like, write evidence backed sci-fi that informs real strategy for companies. So I immediately started working with Amy, just kind of on a part time capacity.
Sam: I took sort of a detour and fulfilled a side quest of starting my own company which was a data management platform for scientific research. So once I had fulfilled that side quest I then went to Amy and was like, okay, I’m now ready. I know you don’t have any job openings. You were not planning on hiring me, but this is why you should hire me.
Sam: And fortunately she did. So that is how I came to work for Future Today Institute. But a little bit more about, Future Today. So the term “institute” can be a bit confusing because we’re not a think tank. We’re actually a for profit entity. And we help companies figure out where they should play in the future, how they can win in the future and how to build resiliency for the future.
Sam: And again, we use our methodology to do that. So we help our clients see the trends that are relevant to them, separating the hype and the passing fads from the things they should actually pay attention to. And we also help them think about uncertainty. So categorizing uncertainty, And exploring next order impact of uncertainty and what all that will help them do.
Sam: It kind of varies client to client, but it can help them build out their product roadmaps. They could help them build out their strategic roadmaps. So, really we’re like strategic advisors; is essentially what we are, but on a longer term time horizon than many other consultants.
Helen: Thank you for sharing that background.
Helen: I’ve been to, I don’t know how many of Amy Webb’s keynotes, it’s always like a favorite, but it’s such an amazing glimpse into the future. It’s one of the reasons why I love SXSW it’s just kind of everyone coming and you’re, you kind of see what, people are talking about, but specifically Amy’s and you mentioned sci-fi and so much of that presentation, which we’ll dive into in a second, does seem like we’re already living in a sci-fi moment right now with some of the stuff that is already being developed.
Helen: She opened her presentation with, you know, and I’ve mentioned this before on the show, that there’s already technology taking MRI scans to understand what we’re thinking and dreaming, converting that into, you know, digital manifestations on the screen. So if you think of a teddy bear, you can like see it on a screen, connect that to a 3D printer.
Helen: And you can really, the prompts are your thoughts from thinking to 3d printing, which is pretty wild. And that’s already exists today.
Sam: So wild. I was reading Rendezvous with Rama, which is an Arthur C. Clark. a book and he basically comes up with the concept of 3D printing, but their bottleneck, their problem is that they don’t understand the language of the aliens that are 3D printing the goods for them.
Sam: And so I think I was like, “Man, if only they could read their minds and envision these products instead of having to like decipher the alien language and then write it down.” But anyways, so there’s little nuggets of truth in so many sci-fi books, which is why I love sci-fi.
Helen: Yeah, likewise. Well, let’s dive into some of the trends that Amy presented, and that’s in your massive, massive trend report.
Helen: And maybe give a little bit of background on your trend report and like the major one that she honed in on this year, which is the super cycle. So I don’t want to steal your thunder, but I will hand over the mic.
Sam: So let me talk about the trend report. We’ve been producing the trend report; I want to say it’s like our 17th year that it may be longer.
Sam: I’m really not [00:10:20] sure. But definitely before my time at Future Today. So it’s this big, giant report, basically a big, giant slide deck of a bunch of different verticals; like up to 14 verticals that cover a bunch of different industries and technologies. And we highlight the trends that we’ve been tracking over the past year and the things that you should be paying attention to.
Sam: So I personally write the Future Of Computing book, the Future Of The Metaverse book, Future Of Space book. And then this year I had the opportunity to co-write Future of AI, which is kind of Amy’s baby, but she let me come on board because it was just so massive that we needed more hands on deck for that.
Sam: So the trend report is free to the public. So if you go to FutureTodayInstitute.com/trends you can read all of those great materials. And in addition, we also have scenarios in there, which are our narratives about the future and how these trends may play out on different time horizons.
Sam: So the theme of this year’s book was Supercycle, and I’ll explain what that means in just a second. But what we’ve seen over the past few years is, until recently, it was fairly easy to categorize trends, like, you know, we would see a trend and we’d say, okay, this goes in the AI book. We’d see a trend and we’d say, this goes in the biotech book.
Sam: So it was very easy to say, okay, let’s sort these out. But this past year, and maybe even in the year before, it became harder and harder to categorize these trends because these technologies started to converge. Specifically, there are three general purpose broad technologies that started to converge.
Sam: The first is artificial intelligence. The second is biotech and the third is the connected ecosystem of things. If you’ve heard of like, internet of things, that’s kind of connected ecosystem, basically wearables and sensors that are embedded increasingly into everything. So I’ll give you an example of how these things are starting to converge.
Sam: And there’s like a million examples of where we see these convergences. But for instance, with the connected ecosystem of things, these are wearables and sensors; Those wearables and sensors, which are now everywhere, are now collecting data for AI systems and improving AI systems. Simultaneously, AI is increasingly the way that we interface with these technologies, because I can now use my voice to be able to communicate with my wearables and with various other sensors and technology. Wearables initially were created for medical applications.
Sam: Now, increasingly they are consumer applications, but still have applications in biotechnology. And then finally, there’ve been papers on papers published in the past two years on how artificial intelligence is helping biotech. It is helping us come up with new medicines. It is helping us come up with new therapies.
Sam: It’s helping us do better diagnostics. So you can start to see how those three general purpose technologies are increasingly intertwined. They serve as inputs to each other. But also as these areas individually start to improve, they’re also lifting up the other technologies. So what this has created is a flywheel of value where these three technologies [have] created entirely new consumer markets, or they have kind of boosted fledgling markets along.
Sam: So they’ve created these new consumer markets again in smart therapeutics and smart devices. Because there’s now giant markets for this, we start to see investors sort of flood these spaces because investors are going to follow where the money is. When you have more money and more funding, it means you can attract more talent.
Sam: So we’ve seen talent start to do an exodus from academia into the startup spaces. When you have talent, then you have innovation. When you have innovation that means you have more consumer value, which means you have more funding, which means you have more talent. And so we just kind of go around and around on this sort of flywheel so to speak.
Sam: And so this has created, what Amy has coined, is the Supercycle, which the official definition, I believe is: the extended period of booming demand that elevates prices and assets to unprecedented heights. What is interesting, we’ve seen super cycles economically before. For instance, in the industrial revolution, that was one. It was an economic super cycle that started because of one technology: the steam engine.
Sam: The internet era was another one; it started because of the internet. So we’ve now entered another Supercycle. But it’s interesting because it’s not just one technology, it’s the combination of three technologies. So that’s our theme for this year is the Supercycle.
Helen: I remember her saying on stage that it’s general purpose in the same way that the steam engine was and that the internet is.
Helen: And I think one thing, and actually I just got back from an MIT AI summit, which was really fascinating. And the organizer, John Werner made a point to really say that MIT was established as a reaction to the industrial revolution for applied sciences and engineers of like, actually we need the builders and to get out of the theory.
Helen: But one thing that kind of struck me as like, we’re entering this new AI revolution, but the speed at which it’s coming is so much more fast than say the industrial revolution, which I don’t know off the top of my head, 75 years or so for society to adjust to it. So how are you all thinking about the speed at which this is happening in this generation T transition phase.
Sam: Oh my goodness. Yes. So we’ve had to adjust our timelines. We’ve had to have shorter timelines. What we are increasingly seeing with our clients is, a few years ago, companies would come to us and say, “all right, give us a 10 year vision.” And then we can start to work towards that 10 year vision. Now companies are coming to us and saying, “I need a two year vision. I don’t know what’s happening in two years.”
Sam: And we’re working with some of the biggest tech companies in the world that are helping build and support this technology. But we also work with the companies that benefit and use this technology and have to deal with this. So when those companies come to us, we’re like, “Listen, even the builders don’t have very long roadmaps.”
Sam: So everyone I think right now is feeling like they’re reacting. And when you are reacting, you aren’t being strategic. So one of the great things about strategic foresight is [that] it doesn’t really matter what your time horizon is because. you can still apply some of the principles to plan.
Sam: So, even if you’re only planning for two years, you can use some of those principles and methodologies to be prepared. I think a lot of companies don’t think about uncertainty in the right way. For instance, you know, a lot of times we’ll have like a tech company come to us and they’re like, “No, no. We’re looking at uncertainty.”
Sam: But we come to find that they’re only looking at uncertainty in tech. They’re only thinking about uncertainties as it relates to AI, but they’re not thinking about uncertainties as it relates to social. They’re not looking at uncertainties as it relates to how ethics and values might change. And all of those uncertainties also impact their technology because they’re changing consumer preferences and changing consumer behavior.
Sam: So, you know, we were working with this tech company, for instance, and I brought up to them and they thought I was insane. I was like, “have you thought about declining birth rates?” And they’re like, “What? Why would I think about declining birth rates? Like we’re like a hard tech startup.”
Sam:And I was like, “Okay, well, let’s think about next order impacts. If fertility rates continue to decline, it may mean that we have a shrinking workforce. It may mean that we have older populations that now make up the majority of the market, which means that your consumers are going to change” and they’re like, “Oh, I never thought about that.”
Sam: So even with the speeding time horizons, you can always think about uncertainties in a systematic way that will help you be prepared.
Helen: Let’s dive into some more of the takeaways from the report. And I guess we, in my mind, there were some like, really like, aha, I don’t know, sci-fi moments that I definitely wanted to share just so people know what’s on the horizon, but also dive more into some of the more practical applications too.
Helen: So like one of the wild things was the slide that, you know, chip manufacturing has is all the rage right now. And we’ll talk more about that. But instead of silicon, they’re starting to use like neuron cells, like human brain cells.
Helen: Which are very efficient to replace silicon. So the biotech, like literally using human brain cells to help power chips and make them more efficient, like talk about sci-fi. So that was like one big moment that I’d like you to expand on.
Sam: Yeah. So, I cover computing as well as AI. So this is a trend that we’re seeing both in the AI book and in computing.
Sam: Again, seeing how these different technology areas are converging. That one might be a little bit more obvious.
Sam: So researchers are trying to come up with better architectures for AI compute because as AI increasingly becomes the way that we interface with compute, it’s going to take a [00:20:53] lot of energy. It’s going to take a lot of resources and it takes time. So researchers were like, okay, what, how can we change this architecture?
Sam: We’ve been running on traditional Von Neumann architecture, which is basically powered Moore’s law until this point. Now that we see a slowing of this, how can we continue to make these workloads efficient? So you’re like, what is the most efficient computer? It’s our brain. Like we process so much information.
Sam: We can simultaneously remember things and process at the same time. So we don’t have that data moving back and forth like you might have in traditional Von Neumann. So they came up with something called neuromorphic computing, which still uses silicon, but it’s inspired based on the brain’s architecture.
Sam: But of course the researchers did not stop there. As you had mentioned about a year ago, Johns Hopkins University researchers announced a new scientific field called organoid intelligence. So this is not AI, it is OI. And organoid intelligence, or organoids, we’ll start with there. Basically are like clumps of cells, typically human brain cells that they are teaching how to do compute.
Sam: So the first evidence of this that we saw or the first like big kind of thing that made its way into pop science is these organoids learned how to play the video game Pong, you’ve seen video game Pong. So they taught these organoids how to play that. And then more recently they taught the organoids, the cells to be able to differentiate one person’s voice out of like 200 people speaking.
Sam: So I think we’re still a long way away from like, you know, using personal compute and like having that be the way that we do personal computing. There’s also a problem of scalability with this.
Sam: But it is much more efficient than our traditional architectures. So maybe it’s not necessarily going to be organoids, but we’re going to learn things from these organoids for sure that are going to change how we do compute. But it does sound quite sci-fi, to your point. And it’s not just that we’re using our human brain cells to do compute, but it’s also that AI is getting better at understanding us.
Sam: So you had mentioned the fMRI to image paper where you know, you essentially can look at a photo of like a bear, or something. The fMRI will scan your brain, and then AI will look at that brain scan and then reconstruct the image. We can now do this with videos, by the way. So, that’s evidence of AI being able to read our brain, but it can also actually write to our brain.
Sam: So we can literally use compute, we can use AI to change our moods which to me is super interesting. Like, I think that for instance, like pharma companies should probably start investing in consumer technology that can modify moods based on [things] like wearables.
Helen: That opens up a whole new biohacking cause we already kind of manipulate ourselves, whether it’s through music or now light and sound.
Helen: So fascinating. So on the chip front, because this is one of the papers that you wrote, so we’ll take it to the crazy sci-fi that’s really reality now. Tell us about, because we haven’t really talked much about the show on the hardware side. And so I love that you’re here and can kind of fill us all in on where we’re at.
Helen: Because I go to so many panels and stuff. There was one the other day that had one of the researchers from the University of Cincinnati talking about it. And she discussed the environmental impact of the hardware. For consideration also potentially seeing the moon as a data center. And then when we were talking ahead of the interview, you were really talking about issues with the supply chain.
Helen: So, I’d love to kind of just get a debrief. For our audience on kind of where we’re at with the chips, what you’re thinking about and go from there.
Sam: Yeah. So one thing we’re seeing this is not just in the United States, but this is all over, is a move to onshore chip production, chip manufacturing.
Sam: We’re trying to move out of strategic areas for geopolitical reasons but also like for climate reasons and environmental reasons. I think Taiwan, for instance, just had a massive earthquake. So like these are the fears of if we’re going to be grounding our economy in artificial intelligence then we better make sure that our supply chains are resilient.
Sam: There’s a lot of trade offs though to onshoring this technology. For instance, bringing that supply chain into the United States is going to be costly. We don’t really have the skill set. It’s definitely more expensive to do it because our skills, our talent is more expensive relative to Taiwan.
Sam: So we’re definitely going to have some issues with chip talent shortages. I think this is again, not just a U.S. problem. This is going to be a global problem as we try to bring supply chains in house. You may have seen recently that NVIDIA stock plummeted. To me, that’s pretty interesting because it wasn’t just NVIDIA, it was also Arm Holdings.
Sam: It was Micron Technology. So just to, I guess, set the scene a little bit, NVIDIA produces the GPUs, the graphics processing units that are instrumental for AI systems. Arm designs, the architecture on which many of the world’s semiconductors are based and then Micron Technology uses or makes flash memory and storage processors.
Sam: Which are important for the GPUs. So we’ve seen kind of an overall decline in the stocks for all of those, which to me, I’m honestly not sure what that signals yet, but it’s a trend that we’re going to be keeping an eye on at Future Today Institute. But to bring this back to, you had mentioned the moon, I also write the space book and so, which kind of is like very random considering that I’m sort of in these more consumer spaces but it’s because I’ve always been a space fangirl and now I get paid to read about space all day and it’s awesome but, something that’s interesting with space, and I’ve been talking to space leaders about this, is space needs better stories.
Sam: I promise this will relate to semiconductors in a second.
Helen: We’re going along for the ride.
Sam: Yeah, I promise it’ll come full circle. It’s amazing. But space needs better stories because right now the space industry is just kind of talking to each other. You know, all of their, “Okay, let’s get pumped for space” is ideally suited for people that are already pumped about space.
Sam: So you need to figure out ways to bring other industries along and on board with this. So two of the applications that I told them about, like, “Hey, maybe these are things that you could get tech excited about; you could get pharma excited about,” the first is semiconductors. So semiconductors, they need a super pristine environment to be produced.
Sam: They require a vacuum. And so space is like a natural environment for them. Launch costs are still way too high to make that a feasible reality, probably anytime soon but that’s a story space could start to tell to tech to start to garner investment. The other thing, bringing it back to organoids and organoid intelligence is, in space, you can produce organs and organoids in 3D, whereas on Earth, because of gravity, they sort of, like, grow into these weird 3D, like, 2D clumps.
Sam: So, if you produce them in microgravity, you’d actually have a much more robust structure. So, there are definitely companies that are looking to produce organs in space, to produce different types of pharmaceutical compounds, like Varda is one of those companies that they are combining pharmaceutical research with space assets.
Sam: So, I think they’re the first lab in space. I think they call themselves the first drug dealers in space, like pharmaceutical drug dealers. But the reason that I highlight all of this is [because] all of these things are so intertwined to each other from semiconductors to AI to space to geopolitics to supply chains.
Sam: If you’re going to tell a story about any one of those, you have to factor in the others.
Helen: And for all of our listeners, last week’s episode, we had Yemi, who is an artist who’s getting to go to space which is so exciting. And one of my takeaways from the Texas Eclipse Festival is that commercial space travel will really be within our reach and affordable within our lifetime, too, with what they’re doing for better, for worse, what Elon’s doing with SpaceX and whatnot.
Helen: So I’m a fangirl about space too.
Sam: Would you?
Helen: Oh, absolutely. Like, they had on stage different people who’ve done the commercial flights from Blue Origin to one of the Space X ones. I don’t know all the names off the top of my head. Some of it’s just, you know, getting to the suborbital and the weightlessness.
Helen: But one gal and I forget which one got to spend three days in space. And then Yemi gets to do a whole week. So I want to do like the three day and then come back or the week and come back.
Sam: Yeah. I’m game for the moon. I’m not super game for Mars.
Helen: Well, and one of the trends, well, especially at SXSW it was like humanoid robots are all the rage too these days, which to be honest, make me very nervous.
Helen: Cause we haven’t figured out AI and the proper guard rails and the people building them don’t even know the full implications of what they’re building and now we’re putting them in robots that can move. And, I saw in Japan, they’ve also put rockets on the robots so that they can fly around.
Helen: I’m like, “What could go wrong?” But the best use case I’ve seen is to send them to Mars and have the humanoid robots build the headquarters ahead of the humans arriving .
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. We wrote a scenario this year in the space trend report about actually using the metaverse to be able to interact and interface with Mars.
Sam: So maybe I don’t physically have to go to Mars. Maybe I can send my robot to Mars, and then it can manipulate things physically for me. And then that’s probably, to be honest, the way that we’re going to interface with other celestial bodies, maybe besides the moon, just because time and energy and humans unfortunately, are pretty vulnerable creatures.
Sam: So it would be much more cost effective if we just sent a fleet of sensors and robots. That said, I do think that like ultimately human beings should go to other celestial bodies, not just our robot clones. But I think where we are going to start is robots on Mars.
Helen: Yeah. And on the I guess controlling a robot, there’s already an interesting use case that I think Yemi shared it on stage during his featured session at SXSW, where there’s I feel like a lot of this is coming out of Japan, but I could be wrong, where they have paraplegics in beds that they’re now employed to work at like a robot cafe where the paraplegics, just through their brains using this brain computer interface technology, are able to control robots, contribute to society and work which is exciting. And at the same time, a little scary too in my mind.
Sam: Maybe the one thing that I would say about BCI is I think we’re going to start seeing more and more consumer tech in this space.
Sam: This is like something that has been relegated to labs or, you know, requiring big giant fMRI machines. I think that we’re going to start to see more technologies that like you and I could purchase to be able to read and write to our brains with this tech. And I also, I do want to say the implant thing. So Neuralink using IEEG. I don’t know if people are gonna want to embed a chip in their brain.
Sam: I think people are gonna prefer to have something that they can take on and off. That comes with a huge range of technical problems because our skulls, fortunately, are like very good at diffusing electricity. And so I think this is going to be a hurdle for the tech companies to figure out. But again, I don’t think it’s going to be the thing where all of us want chips in our heads.
Sam: I think people will want the flexibility to say, “I don’t want anyone reading my mind right now.” But again, that comes with lots of technical hurdles.
Helen: Yeah. And I know that Neuralink got the FDA approval. They’ve done their first human implant with a gentleman. And it’s amazing. I mean, he’s able to play video games and communicate now through this chip.
Helen: And I’ve actually got to do a BCI at Ars Electronica of playing a game with just thinking and it’s very fascinating. However, at the same time, some of the more negative implications too is, you know, we already live in a very surveillanced state and data of everything compiling and getting to power all these AI and train them.
Helen: And like, do we really want people accessing our thoughts? You know, this sounds like a different type of movie scenario.
Sam: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know if you’ve seen The Three Body Problem. I won’t spoil it for everyone, but like the underlying assumption of the three body problem is that no one can read our thoughts.
Sam: So I think it’s interesting that in the year that Three Body Problem came out on Netflix is kind of the year where we’re like, “Oh wait, actually our thoughts are maybe not as private as we thought they were.” So maybe someone needs to make a spinoff of like, what would happen in [The] Three Body Problem if we could read each other’s minds and aliens could read our minds as well.
Helen: Well, and I think Amy had said on stage one year that as part of, you know, you also consult with companies, but because you’re so, you know, living in the future and seeing what’s here that you’ve also got to consult with like movie studios on like the tech, which I always thought like that’s going to be the coolest job.
Helen: And when I see some of these shows, like even there’s a great one on Amazon called Peripheral, but it’s more or less. Well, I don’t want to spoil it, but it’s kind of, well, anything I say will spoil it, but it touches on one of the things that we were just talking about, and I was like, I wonder if Amy, I always look for the credits, so I was like, I wonder if Future Today Institute has consulted on that.
Sam: Maybe. She maybe did. She’s like, she has advised on a lot of sci-fi scripts so it wouldn’t surprise me if she somehow had her hands in that one.
Helen: Before we move on the chip front, because I did want to say that, you know, I’m based here in Cincinnati, Ohio. Intel is putting 20, what is it billion dollars into a chip manufacturing [facility] here.
Helen: The whole state is super excited about that coming. But I guess, you know, some of the concerns, which I didn’t even – it makes sense once I heard it, is that, you know, we talk a lot about the need for security and governance around the actual, you know, AI built on top of it. But with the supply chain that we need to also be thinking about the security of the actual hardware too.
Helen: And I’m just curious what your thoughts are, because you talked about the supply chain and issues around that. What’s the landscape of security around these chips, and the players in the game right now too?
Sam: You and I have spoken before about deep fakes. So one of the scenarios that we are currently playing out at Future Today Institute is disruptions to supply chains caused by deep fakes.
Sam: This year is the year that we are probably surpassing the uncanny valley, so our gut no longer tells us what is real and what is fake. And unfortunately that’s happening in a year where it’s the most important election year of all time, not, I’m not talking about the U.S. election, I’m talking about the fact that there are more global elections this year than, like, ever have aligned before.
Sam: So now we can’t tell what’s fake, and we have these elections coming up. So that’s a recipe, kind of for disaster. And we don’t really have the tools to be able to say confidently, “Hey, this is a deep fake.” But one of the things we’re concerned about at FTI is not just that individuals, like candidates, will be deep faked.
Sam: It’s that entire events might be deep faked. And we almost think of it as like a DDoS attack to the individual where you have a flood of deep fakes that are coming to you from all angles. So maybe we see, for instance, that, Oh my gosh, there was a huge tsunami in Taiwan. And the satellite data is confirming that cause maybe they’ve like somehow figured out a way to hack into that.
Sam: And also in my inbox, I’m seeing this. So maybe what I’m doing, based on that is I’m making investment decisions. Maybe I’m taking some money out of industries that would be impacted by that. So what that could end up doing is like rerouting entire trade routes, like in real time. So it’s just one example of how these types of deep fake technologies could impact supply chains.
Sam: But again, it’s not just people, like it’s entire events but not even real time events. Like it could also be historical events. Like, are we sure that like this historical event actually happened this way? Because I’ve seen footage that shows otherwise. This is something we’ve spoken to, we’ve spoken to the state department about this.
Sam: And it’s something that they are very concerned about, not just because of the supply chain, but like also what this could mean for us geopolitically and in diplomacy and with our relationships with other countries.
Helen: Yeah, it’s very alarming and sobering. And it’s. Even pre ChatGPT, we’ve seen this, especially from, you know, bad state actors.
Helen: I think it was, I’m so bad with years, but we saw when Trump was campaigning or maybe it was the Black Lives Matter or both, but you had, I think it was like Russian groups creating fake Facebook groups in the United States that was organizing actual humans to counter protest and mobilize.
Helen: And this has already happened. So yeah, it’s very concerning. And I know we’ve talked about deep fakes on the show and the Content Authenticity Initiative’s C2PA standard, but I think in general if you’re nervous too like, just be super, super skeptical of anything online. And even as Sam was saying, if it’s coming from multiple sources to just like, take a beat.
Helen: And I think this also just really reinforces the need for human to human connection and community at this moment in time. But I know one big theme from the report is just resilience and also, you know, how can we go up against, I forget what Amy said, the techno authoritarianism of these things.
Helen: So I want to talk about that and really like how we can have agency and control in the midst of all this crazy tech and sci-fi. So I’d love for you to speak to that.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. So agency is something that you’d have to fight for continually and it’s hard. It’s not like an easy thing. Like, I wish that I could tell you, “Oh, just stay informed. Just, if you simply read these newsletters and you simply purchase from these companies, then you can maintain your agency.”
Sam: That’s not how it works. That’s not how it has ever worked in the history of the world. The concept I’ve been thinking about with this question is the meek shall inherit the earth.
Sam: Yes, the meek, the people that don’t necessarily action on what they want will inherit the earth, but they’re going to inherit the earth that the builders build for them. So I think, and again, this is, it’s hard to do, but the people that are going to, that are building the things, that are creating the technology, that are starting the startups, that are writing the things that are creating the art.
Sam: Those are the people that get to shape the world. Not the people that just stay informed without doing anything. Something I tell my clients is the pessimistic scenario happens when you maintain the status quo as technology advances and as behaviors change. You will get a pessimistic scenario 10 out of 10 times if you change nothing.
Sam: Optimism is harder because optimism requires you to do something. So I think, you know, starting by listening to podcasts like this are awesome but you have to ask yourself, so what after this? Like you can’t just learn this and then do nothing. Like go out and build something, go out and create something because that is how you have a tangible effect on how the world ends up.
Sam: Maybe that’s not a super fun answer. But I think that, that’s the true answer. You have to build something to be able to affect the world.
Helen: I love that answer. And I encourage all of our guests to keep asking that question: “So what?” And translate that and channel it into action. And you know, if you’re like, “I’m not a builder, you know, I’m just dipping my toes in AI to learn from this show, which Helen said was a safe space. And now I’m terrified about AI.”
Helen: Sorry. Like, if you’re not a builder yourself, there’s amazing people out there who are building that you can support like Cindy Gallop on the show who wants to see the internet through the female lens. Like if you are not a builder, like, you know, come to our Cincy AI meetups, meet other builders who are embedding the values that you want in your tools.
Helen: But I do want you to talk to the consolidation of power because that’s a real thing that we’re also facing in this transition. And then also, you know, some of the practical takeaways that Amy shared on kind of at a government and company level of how to be thinking about this massive transitional period that we’re on to.
Helen: I wanted to make sure that we included that in today’s conversation.
Sam: Sure. So in terms of the consolidation of power I guess what I’ve been seeing in computing specifically is this, I don’t know if this is the right word for it, but like verticalization of the industry where we used to have a lot more like division of labor where it would be somebody’s comparative advantage to produce the chips, someone else’s to design the chips, someone else’s to run this, like create the software, create the interfaces, et cetera.
Sam: But now all of these companies are like trying to bring all of those things in house. So like Intel, for instance, I think they’ve announced like their own, like new software for AI applications, when traditionally, at least when I think of Intel, I think of like hardware components. NVIDIA, like they’re increasingly controlling the entire vertical of things.
Sam: So that’s how we’re starting to see consolidation of power. And there’s, again, there’s trade offs there. Like, I think that it’s not all inherently bad that they’re doing this. There may be bad outcomes but there could also be good outcomes. I think [it’s] too soon to tell. It’s not really clear right now.
Sam: So, that’s on the consolidation of power front. In terms of practical applications, one of the things that Amy advocates for is establishing a Department of Transition. So basically what are the ways, what are the things we need to be prepared for in the future? Because, you know, the skills of today are not going to be the required skills, necessarily, of tomorrow.
Sam: So we need to figure out how we invest in people and educate people for what happens after this transitionary period. And I’m going to be honest, I don’t think we know how to do that. Like I think right now, especially in education, we don’t know how to educate our kids to be prepared for this.
Sam: Like we’re seeing some models where it’s like, okay, we’re not going to allow ChatGPT at all. And then we’re seeing other models where it’s like, we’re going to embrace this technology so that they learn it. I think that latter model is probably better than the former. But honestly we just don’t know what the skills are that we need to be training for.
Sam: And I think that is an area that we could know, like these are things that we can explore. But we need to dedicate resources to just exploring and testing those questions. Also, I think experimenting is good. Like it’s okay if we have different models of this, because that’s how we’re going to learn what works best. I think just choosing one direction right now on how we educate or upskill is probably not the right move, the right move is probably having multiple and then seeing what works best.
Helen: It’s really hard even hearing you speak to really imagine the precipice that we’re sitting on and the seismic change that’s on the horizon. I think it’s like if you could try to imagine someone with a cart and buggy and telling them, like the future of transportation will be cars, you know, and not having a reference point for that.
Helen: Like we’re sitting in this moment in time of like, this future is going to be so different than what we currently know that it’s hard to kind of wrap our heads around. And it’s happening so fast and that we need to build resilience, we need to take the “so what” and turn it into action. How do you feel about like, universal basic income, because the one thing that I’m really worried about is that it’s happening so fast and that we’re not going to be able to upskill fast enough, or that too many people will be replaced by whether AI or these humanoids that are going to take over factories even more.
Helen: Like, what does that mean, especially since you have an economic background, for just like the safety net and day to day during this transition.
Sam: So this is my personal opinion. This is not like the opinion of Future Today Institute. I actually have no idea what Amy’s opinion on this is, so I can only tell you mine.
Sam: But we actually both have a background in economics. So I’ll tell you what I like about UBI and then I’ll tell you what I do not like about UBI. I do like UBI and that it gives people the agency to spend money how they want. I think it would be great if we replaced a lot of our other systems with just giving people cash instead of telling them that they have to spend it in x, y, z way.
Sam: We’re all different. We all have different needs and different preferences. We can also maybe use that cash to build other things and maybe be entrepreneurial in that way. So that is one reason that I like UBI, but I think that it can’t necessarily be an addition to existing systems. It needs to be a replacement of existing systems.
Sam: Here’s what I don’t like about UBI and just something that I’m afraid of. If we go down this path. I think that work gives people meaning and I think people need to have meaning and purpose. And I think that by moving to just a UBI model, we’re kind of removing incentives in a way where I think there’s going to be some bad kind of unintended consequences of that.
Sam: We’re already facing sort of a meaning crisis where people aren’t, and a lot of people don’t see meaning and value in work. And I don’t think – maybe it would be fine for the economy if we have AI take over a bunch of jobs, but I don’t know if it is good for human souls.
Sam: So I don’t know if that’s exactly the answer that you’re looking for, but like, it’s just something that concerns me. The other thing that I do know about human beings though, is that we love to create things. And I think yes, maybe AI will replace the jobs of today. Or I guess people are saying the people that use AI will replace the people who don’t.
Sam: But I think that we are underestimating human creativity. There’s no limits to growth in what we can imagine ourselves creating. So I think there may be things in the future that AI can’t create and maybe it is a human thing. So that’s my other thing that I’ll say is like, I think thinking about our souls like in our human meaning is important. And something like UBI I’m just worried, is gonna distort that.
Helen: And I’m not looking for any exact answer, this is why I’m on the show, to pick people’s brains and get other perspectives. Yeah I think the, I mean, we have the loneliness epidemic happening right now. And a lot of hyperpolarization and, you know, a lot of issues in the United States.
Helen: And with a, you know, potentially seismic shift in our relation to work which the pandemic already has challenged us in so many ways, will be how we find meaning, whether that’s through work or otherwise. But there’s a lot of cultures out there. It’s a very, what is it, shaker heritage in the United States of where our strong work ethic and how we find meaning, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only way we can find meaning as humans as well.
Helen: So, but I think that’s one of the biggest questions of our time in the midst of all of this is where we find purpose and meaning and all of that too.
Sam: And by the way, this is like something we can experiment with too. Like, it doesn’t have to be like, “Now we have UBI for everyone.” Like, maybe this starts in, like, communities.
Sam: Maybe this, like, starts at the state level. And then we can test and, like, see what will happen. But what’s cool about these kinds of things, like, we can experiment. It’s not like this or that. We can learn from these things. So even if it’s an unknown, it’s still an unknown that we can test and see what happens.
Helen: And there’s a book I reference a lot called Utopia for Realists by Rucker Bergman. And he talks a lot about some of the studies that they’ve already done with universal basic income. And I reference that book a lot or it’s shaped my thinking a lot on that front. Okay. So last questions. You mentioned you’re a sci-fi fan.
Helen: What’s some of your favorite sci-fi, either books or films or otherwise, that has influenced you some of the most?
Sam: Yeah, what a generous question. Thank you for asking me that. I love Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke. That’s probably like the sci-fi that got me into sci-fi.
Sam: I really like conceptual sci-fi. Like, I don’t really need it to be character driven. I just love a fascinating concept. So, one that I like, which I’ve never heard anyone else read this, so maybe one of your viewers will have read this but it’s called Blindsight. Which is literally about like vampires in space.
Sam: It’s crazy. But it’s a really fun concept. I love There Is No Anti-Memetics Division which I guess could be considered a sci-fi book. I’m trying to think, I feel like [there are] so many that I’m already missing. Oh, I love Diaspora by Greg Egan. I think that he writes the best about what potential futures could look like if we were to move to the metaverse, like [if] our consciousness were to be embedded into, basically like digitized.
Sam: I think that he’s super brilliant. I could probably go on for a while on this. So I’ll just pause it right there.
Helen: Yeah. Oh, I love it. We’ll link to all of these and the ones that I haven’t consumed yet; I’m adding it to my list as well. One thing, since you mentioned Diaspora being such a great case of future scenarios and possibilities, I guess one thing that we wanted to make sure to cover in today’s interview too, is just the importance of thinking through the scenarios and you guys, that’s kind of your expertise, not just trends, but the forecasting and these scenarios play a big part of that.
Helen: So I want to make sure that we also include that in today’s conversation too.
Sam: Yeah, so I would love to take it back a few decades, just for a moment and talk about a man named Herman Kahn. So Herman Kahn was this guy who worked for RAND Corporation and he was responsible for modeling, basically trying to figure out what would happen in different scenarios if we dropped a nuclear weapon on different locations.
Sam: But also like basically asking and answering the question, “What if there was a nuclear war,” like what would happen? And so Herman Kahn, he crunched the data, like he crunched the numbers. He did the analysis and he figured out how many people would die in each different scenario.
Sam: But when he presented it, he didn’t just present the numbers. He described what would happen in very vivid detail, which I don’t think he was necessarily asked to do. And in his paper, there were two conclusions. It was that nuclear war is possible and nuclear war is winnable. And so that made military leaders excited and they’re like, we have to read this paper.
Sam: So they were reading it and they’re like, well, I guess technically it is winnable, but this is a future that Herman Kahn has painted that is so vivid and in a future I do not want to live in that like Herman Kahn is probably one of the reasons that a nuclear bomb hasn’t been dropped on a population since the 40s.
Sam: So I wanted to highlight that to say the reason that we write these scenarios, these narratives, are because you have to get emotional about some of these things to be able to have urgency to, to motivate action. You can have the most precise well calculated figures, but if the person reading those figures, like doesn’t see themselves in that future, then it may be really hard too motivate action.
Sam: So, that’s one of the reasons that we think scenarios are important. Yes, you know, we’ll crunch the numbers for you. Well, we’ll give you pretty tables and charts, but like, we’re also going to tell you multiple different ways where this could go down in a way that is engaging to you.
Sam: So I think also like one more practical takeaway, like could be like, hey, if you’re trying to get your decision makers to like, make a decision or move, maybe the way to do that isn’t by just showing graphs. Maybe the way to do that is by telling a story.
Helen: And we have a whole episode with Katie at Narratize, which is a fabulous all female founded company that literally, their gen AI tool is helping technical people tell their stories so that innovations don’t get shelved.
Helen: And I think a theme just throughout, you know, this show is just the importance and the power of storytelling, whether it’s through art or about this technology. Whether it’s, you know, data backed scenarios like Sam is sharing or just envisioning through Solarpunk, a possible better future, you know, art and storytelling, you know, and the humanities are so needed at this moment of massive tech transition as well, too.
Helen: So I ask this to all my guests. If you want our listeners and viewers to walk away with one thing, what’s that one thing that you want them to remember?
Sam: You have to know what is plausible to be able to build what is desirable. This is why strategic foresight or just thinking systematically about the future is important.
Sam: You have to have a vision to be able to create a plan. And I think that we can do this, not just with our companies, but also in our individual lives. So again, know what’s plausible to build what is desirable.
Helen: I love that. I’m definitely going to repeat that now that it all gives me credit all the time, Sam.
Helen: Oh, thank you so much for being on the show. It’s been an absolute pleasure. So thank you for sharing your time, all of your amazing insights and giving us all some practical tips of how we can navigate and be resilient in this time of massive transition. So thank you again.
Sam: Yeah. And thank you. Thank you for having this podcast.
Sam: You’re giving some really good information to people. And your guests that I’ve seen have been fantastic. You ask great questions. So thank you.
Helen: Thank you for spending some time with us today. We’re just getting started and would love your support. Subscribe to Creativity Squared on your preferred podcast platform and leave a review. It really helps. And I’d love to hear your feedback. What topics are you thinking about and want to dive into more?
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