Fireside Chat, Interview, Conference Presentation
A Conversation with Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, Facebook, and the Parker Foundation
- The Milken Institute aims to advance substantive policy and economic change through year-round content rather than conversation alone.
- The Institute plans its first Japan symposium on March 25th and its annual global conference in Los Angeles from April 27th through May 1st.
- Sean Parker anticipates that the 21st century will diverge from current futurist projections and that human-machine merger will likely not occur within the next 100 years.
- Climate change-driven mass migrations are forecasted to present more significant threats than artificial super intelligence.
- U.S. healthcare spending is projected to reach 34% of GDP by 2035 and potentially 50% of GDP by 2080.
- A revolution in life sciences is expected driven by increased understanding of human and biological system complexity.
- The trend of increasing innovation and decreasing discovery time in life sciences is predicted to accelerate similar to Moore's Law in semiconductors.
- The global economy is entering a period of extraordinary volatility, with a specific expectation of a volatile stock market year.
- Pension funds and large institutional investors may shift capital to technology sectors to achieve 10% to 15% annual returns if they lose faith in public equities.
- Legacy movie studios' total spending will be dwarfed by the $20+ billion per year planned by Netflix and competitors for content acquisition over the next five years.
- Cyber defense is identified as a major opportunity emerging from the escalation of cyber warfare.
- Life sciences is predicted to become the largest investment thematic due to massive growth in healthcare spending.
- Mobile ubiquity has tightened social media feedback loops, increasing product addiction.
- Voters and U.S. legislators are expected to express increasing concerns regarding privacy and the ability of social platforms to influence voting and thinking.
- Amazon is noted for recording conversations on Alexa-enabled devices without guaranteed privacy.
- Government intervention to police company behavior is predicted if public dialogue fails to change corporate conduct.
- Society will face deep moral and ethical questions regarding gene editing, designer babies, and behavioral changes within the next 10 to 20 years.
- Moral decisions regarding the removal of genes causing permanent handicaps will arise as scientists better understand the genetic causes of severe diseases.