Billionaire Venture Capitalist Vinod Khosla, one of Open AI's earliest backers, has now come up with 10 predictions about what the world might look like in the coming decades, underpinning his investment philosophy. From freeing the bottom 50% of the most undesirable jobs with machine robots to fusion replacing coal in 50 years, and having Artificial Intelligence based "near free" doctors and teachers — Khosla listed a series of changes he foresees in the coming years.
"I've come up with 10 or so predictions about what the world might look like in the coming decades, and these underpin my investment philosophy. These have to do with how technology (AI and beyond) is the only lever by which we'll reinvent societal infrastructure to give the resources enjoyed by 10% of the planet to the remaining 90%," Kosla said in a series of posts on social media site X, formerly known as Twitter.
"The need to work could disappear in a few decades if we let it happen. The human experience could be made richer — not just in the material sense but in the proverbial one. We'll have more agency, self-efficacy, and fulfillment, learning and doing what we love while maintaining a higher standard of living. Humans will be free to do what they want to do and not what they need to do to feed their family. Especially good for the bottom 3 billion people on this planet. But we can put obstacles in the way or not be resolute about getting there," Khosla said.
Here is a summary of these predictions:
Prediction 1: We will be capable of having (subject to no political barriers) Al-based near free doctors, lawyers and tutors for every citizen of the planet that will amplify our human professionals to improve accessibility and care.
Khosla said that most medical professionals are not AI experts, and they cannot predict what AI will do by 2030-35. "I have found them to be mostly wrong since I first wrote about AI in medicine in 2012. The nature of technology’s exponential curve is non-intuitive for humans; the capabilities of smart technologies in 2050 (hardware, software, tests) are hard to imagine, just as today's smartphones were unimaginable 20 years ago," he said.
"Even most software experts are unqualified to judge where technology will lead in two decades, let alone doctors who have little familiarity with the rate of progress and the mechanisms of progress and possibilities in these areas. Recall how radiologists initially resisted AI, skeptical of its capabilities. Now, JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) accepts AI's parity with humans on certain tasks of radiological interpretation as a given," he added.
Khosla said that in 2016, he had published a long-form public paper outlining his views on how AI will revolutionize the practice of medicine turning it into the science of medicine. "It has aged well; we have predicted roughly the current evolution and have ourselves developed dozens of technologies using AI in the manners in which we had SPECULATED."
Prediction 2: We could have more efficient sources of plant protein to replace animal protein and much better fertilizer.
"If you think about it, it makes no sense that we raise cows on alfalfa (which contains RuBisCO), to eat their protein. Why not just eat the refined RuBisCO from alfalfa directly and get the protein? RuBisCO is the most abundant protein on Earth, given its prevalence in most green plants," he added.
Ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) is a key enzyme in photosynthesis catalyzing corbondioxide fixation. It is an enzyme involved in light-independent part of photosynthesis, including the carbon fixation by which atmospheric carbon dioxide is converted by plants and other photosynthetic organisms to energy-rich molecules such as glucose.
Prediction 3: We could replace the majority of cars in most cities.
"Traffic drives me nuts (have yet to meet someone who feels otherwise). And you cannot change the width of streets; that's a fixed variable. The solution has got to be autonomous personal rapid transit (PRT) that fits in bicycle lane-width tracks with on-demand, point-to-point PRT and increases passenger throughput to that of light rail," Khosla said.
Prediction 4: In 15 years we could have flying Mach 5 planes that get us from NYC to London in 90 minutes - on sustainable aviation fuel no less.
Prediction 5: In 25 years there could be a billion bipedal robots (a million in 10 years). This would create a new industry larger than the current auto industry. From factory workers to farm workers and more, we could free humans from the bottom 50% of really undesirable jobs. You'd have yours, I'd have mine - and it'll totally change how we interact with the physical world.
But Khosla warned that this will have to be done with care, empathy, humanism and compassion. "If this happens, we will need UBI and we will be able to afford it to complement markets & their harsh dislocations."
Prediction 6: There could be a billion programmers all "programming" in natural language. The "craft" of coding would be commoditised and the entire field would be opened up to those without the classic CS degree. Just one of innumerable examples of how entire industries could be shaken up.
As an anecdote, he added, "Fun story – at a recent coding hackathon, the winner was a marketer. Not a coder, but a marketer. Previously it was the best coder who won, less dependent on idea and more on execution and ability to jerry rig a solution. Now it's the best idea that wins since we've democratized what it means to program and barriers to entry are much lower (i.e. natural language!)"
Prediction 7: A world where we can discover more resources than we consume in the next few decades.
"Much has been written by pessimists about the shortages of lithium, cobalt, copper and the like. That's not a failure of what's out there. That's a failure of what we're able to find. And that too could change," he said.
Prediction 8: We could replace all coal plants by 2050. My bet is on fusion.
The best part, he said, was that we’d be using the existing infra from coal if we stop "shortsightedly dismantling these plants and replacing their boilers with fusion boilers."
Prediction 9: Music and entertainment could be plentiful, and personalised. Content creation would be commoditized, but it is not going to change the celebrity-consumer relationship. That "phenomenon" would still exist as a different experience.
"Hard to know exactly how but I think this will also democratise access to everything from sports commentary to music creation. And of course, it would personalise all forms of entertainment and enable many more creators!" he quipped
Prediction 10: Carbon emissions could be a smaller issue (though still an issue) if we get the will to find and scale better technologies for cement, steel, agriculture, transportation, power production, HVAC, etc. Most such efforts will fail but enough will succeed to solve the problem of carbon emissions in the critical areas.
He concluded by saying we can choose to make the world utopian or dystopian, and that we were already betting on the utopian version back in 2014.
First Published: Nov 4, 2023 11:57 AM IST
