Happy New Year!
It’s a new year, OpenAI released a new model, and we might be at the dawn of Average General Intelligence (AGI) – a world with AI systems capable of understanding, learning, and applying intelligence across a wide range of tasks at human levels or beyond.
What are the implications? What will an AGI future look like?
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, recently wrote Machines of Loving Grace speculating on 5 domains that will be radically transformed by powerful AI. It’s essential reading on the topic.
I have my own hunch: the future’s already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.
Introduction
I think a lot about an essay by Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google from 2011:
“A simple way to forecast the future is to look at what rich people have today; middle-income people will have something equivalent in 10 years, and poor people will have it in an additional decade.”
This is a clear pattern looking back through history:
Automobiles
- Karl Benz invents the first automobile in 1885. It’s a luxury good.
- In 1908, Henry Ford brings his model T to the masses.
- Today, you can get in Twitter fights for suggesting car ownership is anything other than an essential right.
Televisions
In the 90’s big TVs were only for people living in big houses.
As advertised, $1,899 ($4,378.98 in inflation-adjusted 2024 dollars)
Today, TVs are bigger, flatter, crisper, and affordable for people in houses of all sizes.
Smartphones
The first iPhone was released in 2007. In less than 20 years, smartphones have become ubiquitous.
The technology has advanced so much that those same people on Twitter who think car ownership is a right would probably consider giving someone an original iPhone to be form of torture:
No front facing camera!?! No Portrait mode? No video? How barbaric!
…though they are slightly more valuable if you can find one in an unopened box.
The iPhone SE, released in 2020, is similar in shape to the first iPhone, but it has a front facing camera,4k video recording, a fingerprint sensor, and water resistance – none of which existed in the original, all for half the price.
Conclusion:
To imagine futures, we should start by looking around at things available to the affluent today. How might technology enable mass-available versions of those things in the future? From there, we can think about how the future might look different from the present.
Part 1: Chauffers
What is it?
Rich people can hire other people to drive them places.
What will it look in the future?
In his 2011 essay quoted at the top of this post, this was Hal Varian’s first proposed example: “Today, rich people have chauffeurs. In 10 years or less, middle-income drivers will be able to afford robotic cars that drive themselves, at least in some circumstances…”
We don’t yet have mass-available autonomous cars—though Waymo recently released driverless robotaxis to the public of San Francisco, and Tesla has an Autopilot feature.
Maybe some transformative innovations just take an extra decade or two.
One thing Hal Varian’s essay did not predict the rise of Uber. While a scrappy Bay Area startup in 2011, Uber is now a global ride sharing and stuff-delivery platform. Uber drivers are still humans, but Uber has created an international ecosystem of on-demand chauffeurs at affordable prices.
It’s worth noting that taxis (and jitneys) have existed almost since the invention of the automobile. Sometimes an improved future is just a better-connected version of the past.
How might this make the future look different?
Autonomous cars should make ground transportation cheaper and safer. Electrified autonomous cars should improve air quality and help with climate change.
Being able to do meaningful work, have deep conversations, or partake in extra leisure while in motion rather than keeping our hands at 10-and-2 and focusing on the road will increase our tolerance for “driving” longer distances. Perhaps this will increase our willingness to live farther from city centers and lead to more affordable housing.
Switching the default mode of transportation from personal automobiles to rented robotaxis would reduce parking requirements. This would affect the way we develop our cities, shopping centers, and houses—more space for people and less space for cars!
Maybe in the future only rich people and a few enthusiasts will own cars: much like horse-ownership today!
Predicting the Future
In 2025, I will continue this idea as a series of short, speculative posts. Let’s think about things currently available to the affluent and what their AI-powered, mass-available equivalents might look like.
Do you have thoughts? Suggestions? Send me a message!