Interview, Fireside Chat, Conference Presentation
a16z Podcast | Not If, But How -- When Technology is Inevitable (with Kevin Kelly)
- Long-term digital tech trends are expected to continue for the next 20 to 30 years, with the sharing economy anticipated to remain in its "day one, day two" phase for 10 to 30 years, while computer science is predicted to run everything for the next 25 years before biotech may eclipse software.
- Specific outcomes like the iPhone are deemed not inevitable, whereas the telephone, the internet, the "huge decentralization" of sharing platforms like Uber and Airbnb, and the growth of an "internet of experiences" where currency is experience, are considered unavoidable.
- Increased life tracking is predicted as inevitable over the next 20 to 30 years, necessitating "smart regulations" that assume such sharing and tracking will occur rather than trying to stop them, with the law expected to follow technology rather than precede it.
- VR is expected to "explode" in a couple of years similar to the PC expansion in 1981, with subsequent generations of headsets likely featuring internal cameras for eye tracking, leading to a future where business travel and physical office presence may vanish due to sufficient VR intimacy for high-stakes sales and social interaction.
- VR fidelity is predicted to improve annually with a "constantly receding goal" of discerning reality, eventually making VR "the most social of all the social media," potentially triggering a "reverse market" where users pay influencers directly and a "peer-to-peer ad system" eliminates ad agencies.
- AI is deemed inevitable due to recent acceleration from GPUs, big data, and deep neural nets, expected to become a utility commodity served like electricity where users purchase access to perform specific tasks.
- Future human-AI interaction is projected to follow a "Centaur" model where workers are paid for collaboration with AI, with humans primarily retaining roles in uncertain, fuzzy, interpersonal tasks like nursing, coaching, and questioning, while bots handle jobs specifiable by efficiency or productivity.
- Over the next 10 to 20 years, machines will handle tasks in unspecified domains, causing jobs to be restructured rather than replaced, while human-specific roles like coaching and nursing are expected to increase in price as other tasks drop in price.
- Countries like Singapore and China are aggressively investing in education and computer science to gain an advantage, while smaller institutions, think tanks, and megacities are expected to lead civic innovation in managing these trends.
- The shift from the "internet of information" to the "internet of experiences" will be accompanied by planetary-scale collaboration involving a billion plus people, and AR is expected to allow for the "waste" of AI resources to generate new wealth.
- A move toward a "proto-hive mind" on platforms like Twitter is considered inevitable, contrasting with the internet itself which was an unexpected technology, whereas flying machines were expected and nuclear power was an unexpected success.
- Risks include the failure to predict unexpected technologies or to adapt education and political structures to accept the loss of specific manufacturing jobs, with past errors often involving assuming the field successful in the last 30 years will remain the same.