Breaking Banks
Hosted By Brett King, Jason Henrichs, & JP Nicols
The #1 global fintech radio show and podcast. Every week we explore the personalities, startups, innovators, and industry players driving disruption in financial services; from Incumbents to unicorns, and from the latest cutting edge technology to the people who are using it to help to create a more innovative, inclusive and healthy financial future.

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[Music] this week on the futurists in recent years Tesla has really defied the Skeptics and emerged as the preeminent electric car company in the world Brett I’m going to make a bold prediction here um I think that era has come to an end [Music] happy New Year you are listening to the futurists I’m Rob tursik with my co-host business partner Brett King hey hey yes and this week we’ve got a special guest Katie King hi Katie Miss metaverse hello I’m back I’m back happy to be here 2023 let’s go happy to have you back on the show uh so you folks are over in Thailand right now I can see this night time where you are at the daytime where I am thanks for staying up late to record this special edition of the futurists no problem welcome let’s get into it all right this is the week that we’re gonna take the Bold stab at the future each week on the futurist we ask our guests to make a bold forecast or even a prediction sometimes they’re game to do it and sometimes they’ll make forecasts and predictions and talk about what they Envision for the future going all the way out 30 40 years out this episode is our chance um we’re going to do it we’re going to put our hand on the flame because we’re gonna actually put dates against our forecast so pay attention to this show folks if you’re listening this is the chance to find out whether we’re right wrong well how Shall We Begin then Brett it’s been a tumultuous year 2022 was a surprising year you know looking back at it I don’t think many people would have forecasted that Russia would create the largest land invasion in Europe since World War II

that happened as a result you know yes which is uh we tried to deny it for a while because we did have um really good employment numbers which is counter-intuitive to a traditional recession so this is the argument for why um you know the Biden administration of course didn’t didn’t report the recession in the early early quarters but it’s pretty clear now that globally um you know the economy is depressed the question is how long does that continue into 2023 I guess right well and everybody’s saying that this year there will be a recession I haven’t heard anybody who hasn’t said 2023 is going to have a recession so I guess the big question is how big or how deep or how long of a recession um one of the interesting things to notice about the last three economic resets or economic Corrections is um in the past when there was a recession uh when the recession would last a while you know last a year and a half or two years but in the last three or sessions to the United States employment levels took a very long time to restabilize they did eventually restabilize but they took years many many years and what happened in the meantime was automation um so you know employers took the opportunity during a recession to replace human workers with their software automation or robotic systems uh Brett what’s your name

yeah the optionality on that is in obviously um increasing So you you’re going to start to see experiments on The Fringe of these um spaces like in the legal industry um you know and Healthcare and so forth you’re seeing specialization so in healthcare you’ve got you know oncology research looking at trying to get those diagnosis is better and so forth you’ve got surgical robots doing components what you haven’t got right now is the sort of administrative side of things but when there’s pressure on Talent then that’s where you’re going to go you’re going to be going for 40 of the cost of the healthcare system at least in the United States you’re going to be looking after trying to uh Robo you know a robotic process automate play robotic process automation to those areas right so um and in the same process hopefully um you know getting the cost of it down so I think that’s a possibility off the back of the recession for sure I think it’s true I think healthcare is is rape for reinvention and it’s ripe for some kind of streamlining anytime you have an industry that’s very expensive and produces a lousy consumer experience and it’s certainly true of Healthcare in the United States uh that’s an industry that’s ripe for disruption uh we had on our show in last year we had Dr Philip elvada on the show and he was talking about Ai and Healthcare and how to drive down the cost curve his example was the simple diagnostic that you do when you go see a doctor um they they do uh you know they just check your your weight and your blood pressure and so forth and um all of that now can be automated uh and that saves about 250 dollars per visit per office visit so healthcare companies have a great deal of economic interest in automation no doubt we’ll see more and more of that uh it looks like diagnosis is a big area you know tracking and identifying and spotting patterns and then um and making a correct uh and you know I think the evidence we’ve seen with the generative AI stuff you know the um the art generated and the language generated AI stuff we are seeing that these deep learning algorithms are getting getting much better at collecting data for reference purposes and that’s when you’re talking about the advances in Diagnostics it’s the same sort of sort of models they’re building on the imagery that’s used in those disciplines so um you know there should be some crossover in terms of the advancements being made in those areas over the next couple of years as a result you know it’s quite astounding to me uh looking at the the rapid take-up of stuff like um uh chat GPT and open AI is uh Dolly 2 and stable diffusion and other systems for generating images that was another big surprise for 2022 and those things existed down one had existed for some time beforehand but the rapid Improvement I think was what caught people off guard I started paying attention in the spring of 2022 and by Fall 2022 those programs were quite good they were not that great in the spring and they were kind of weak in the summer but you could see visible progress week after week after week and I happened to be connected to a lot of folks who do art and some of them jumped into this whole hog like they just went for it and decided to master the idea of right prompts for image generating apps that’s a whole new skill set now right yeah but you know it’s not it’s not very hard to replicate you already have people claiming that someone ripped them off because they stole their prompt which is just sort of I think funny since the systems are learned are trained on huge amounts of artistic work that other people did and so like who’s ripping off um but what people don’t seem to see is how that stuff connects together into displacing real workers from real jobs it’s not just the stock image business or you know the the illustration business that are going to be threatened of course those will be there are many other fields that are going to get disrupted you can see advertising um especially social media marketing being automated uh to a level that’s that’s hard to imagine and um you know remember Microsoft has the code you need as a creative director really yeah that’s exactly so the human discernment and prompts are really going to be the place for humans to play and where to migrate I didn’t even think about that aspect of it on on the but you know having worked in the agency side for many years yeah it’s an agency what do you even need an agency for when you can go to chat GPT and say write a marketing email in five paragraphs that sells the virtues of this product and it cranks it out and it’s better than something you would have written yourself the next step is automate that and schedule it yeah uh you know because Microsoft has the commercial rights to the products from open AI that means they’re going to be able to integrate chat GPT and soon gpt4 into programs like Microsoft Word Outlook and PowerPoint and so just imagine you know as soon you’ll be able to say to um to PowerPoint you’ll be able to talk to PowerPoint and say crank out a 10-page slide deck in the Sequoia format for a startup company in healthcare and it’ll generate it automatically and it might use you know Imaging to make make the images for the slides as well well what do you envision for 2023 threat when it comes to things like chat jpt well you know we do know the version 4 from open AI Chachi bt4 will be released uh probably around the middle of next year and if the Improvement that we’ve seen between version 3 and 3.5 or what we known as Chachi BT uh these days it sort of is consistent with what we see in version four um then already you know prepare to have your minds blown but the word on the street is actually that gbt4 will make a much more significant leap in capability so um I think we’re going to have the first AI that passes a touring test convincingly and I think that’s going to come out of chaturbet24 I would guess that you could already uh they could already pass the the touring test what’s what is the touring test for those who are listening uh well in 1953 I think it was Alan Turing who was the um great mind behind um the code breaking machine um that broke their Enigma in second world war um and he found founded actually this sort of principle on thinking machines and what would Define a thinking machine and so I think it’s 10 um parts to the test but essentially if you can have a conversation with an AI and not know it’s not a human then that’s essentially um the core element of the Turing test so your forecast is that this is the year 2023. yeah we’re gonna we’re gonna do that decisively or at least we’ll have the claim that it can do it right exactly I think we’re already there what’s happening too is um you know they’re rushing to start to be able to fingerprint uh chat gbt so this way yeah a lot of people are going to be using it to create essays and whatnot in fact they actually made a new term for it called a algorithm so instead of plagiarism it’s uh algerism because it’s AI assisted plagiarism so uh you know actually I think the next step my prediction is is that uh we’re going to be seeing people working for the AIS so they’ll be actually jumping in taking these uh AI plagiarized Works let’s say and being created a custom version of it that people can use and pass it off and you know it’s it’s kind of a backwards Wave It’s what’s happening right now it’s kind of interesting yeah that’s true that’s a good point in fact you could argue you that we already are working for the AI you know when we’re um when we’re trying to guess or game the system and figure out how to write a good prompt really that’s the AI training us how to talk to it how do you you know how to find the right words to get the result that we want and it’s worth noting that you know the millions of people that have been using stable diffusion and Dolly too and so on that’s free labor like people have been gleefully volunteering to train these AIS and that’s a ton of money that these companies have saved in the process uh so I think you’re right Katie that the AI is going to condition the workforce it’s going to train the workforce even as we’re training it how to think like us or how to talk like us imagine even if um like a band like the Beatles the remaining members of The Beatles decided to release new music that was AI generated in the style of Beatles um actually scary thought highly likely um you’ve probably already seen those AI generated images of what Jimi Hendrix and Janice Joplin would look like if they were still alive today yeah and we can even we can even generate the artists that are dead and bring them back to life keep them working forever in a virtual form Grim stuff isn’t that an episode of Black Mirror

unfortunately that’s one of the things when we start talking about the future it sure does seem like Black Mirror yeah you know but but part of that is the human behavioral element and I think if we could get uh people really um sort of focused on Mission which I think you know it won’t come in the next couple of years but could come after that particularly with the stuff around climate change um what what do you think about climate issues this year Robert I’ve got a lot to share on that subject but you know before we go there let me just offer one other thought here which is about games and AI because it kind of links together those two ideas okay so in the gaming industry gaming is an interesting field and we’re going to have uh Dean Takahashi come out uh in a long time Observer almost in the game Ministry so he’ll tell us about the future of games in a in a coming episode The futurists there’s a preview of that there’s a big transaction that’s about to happen uh Microsoft wants to buy Activision Activision is one of the biggest independent Studios that’s left right gaming industry has gone through a tremendous wave of consolidation over the last decade the biggest gaming companies in the world are not American uh Chinese company 10 cent is the biggest gaming company in the world Sony is also a major player and so Microsoft’s trying to scale up to compete now there’s a lot more to the story than that because as we’ve talked about on this show Brett several times gaming is really the place we’re going to incubate the metaverse so if the metaverse or some sort of 3D world really does happen it’s very likely to occur inside of an online game that’s a that’s a great starting point for it and arguably today the best versions of the metaverse are inside of game worlds like fortnite um so Microsoft’s making a huge play in this space the their focus is more industrial like simulated 3D environments for for business but this is their their consumer aspect is to go after but they’ve got Minecraft don’t forget right they do yeah so they do Minecraft into the Multiverse is a no-brainer right that’s a that’s a builder tool yeah and that really is important because uh in the metaverse everybody’s gonna be created right so people are going to make stuff so companies that have good Builder tools are going to be the ones that get the best users and Microsoft’s been been acquiring a lot of uh a lot of um communities gaming communities they’ve been very focused focused on that they also own LinkedIn so they have business Community as well and um so so anyway that’s some of Microsoft’s strategy however they’ve run into a lot of resistance with this acquisition so this would be if Microsoft were to buy Activision it would be the largest acquisition in the gaming business and um both the EU and the United States government have uh have indicated that they’re going to fight it and the U.S is suing Microsoft to stop the stop it that’s a um the Federal Trade Commission uh which is led by headed by lean on any trust basis that’s exactly right so Microsoft’s been down this road before uh what’s interesting is um the the present Microsoft has resisted it he said we’ve tried to play nice with the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission they’re going to fight it so we’re going to see this epic fight my forecast is that Microsoft will prevail I think that the U.S government’s going to have a hard time proving that Microsoft is in any kind of position to dominate The Gaming space because they’re not the biggest company in the world um and if they don’t allow this merger to occur you’re going to have two wounded Giants in the United States who are both vulnerable or in some respects to these larger International Players yeah so we’ll find out this year but anyway in the gaming space I think uh a deal with a lot of implications for the metaverse and immersive 3D worlds well on that what about um what about the Apple reality glasses coming out um it could be later this month you know so yeah that’s going to be huge I mean not only is it just going to be about the augmented reality and the head mounted display Tech um can’t believe that we’re going to get it this year um the the other element of it is that you know we have a whole new world of apps coming like um because the visualization of content and you know you know and making it smartly interactive is going to be such an art it’s going to be very different from mobile so you have to have new content created for this as well which is going to create a whole new series of businesses off of those augmented reality apps so um that you know we’re actually going to see the start of that this year I think that’s right uh everything up till this point has been preliminary and and as a historical parallel I’d point to uh companies like rim and palm and Nokia in the mid-2000s those companies were all making a version of a smartphone you know sort of like a Proto type of a smartphone at the time they were called smartphones but they weren’t that smart and um they weren’t that capable and they hadn’t figured out the app model the App Store model wasn’t really working you had to go through your mobile operator in 2005 to buy any kind of downloadable item the finting um you know boom is is due to the Mobile smartphone you know yeah that’s right it extended into really every aspect of life uh so the big question is will AR and maybe VR augmented reality or virtual reality or mixed reality or extended reality will these devices replace the smartphone will they be an extension of the smartphone will they further entrench companies like Apple and Google in this space or will new a new company displace them you know Meta Meta has been betting the bank on displacing app is a kind of an open rivalry between the Facebook and apple um and um yeah Mike Mark Zuckerberg’s not has not hesitated to throw billions of dollars at the problem you know arguably the meta Quest is the best virtual reality device I like it it’s it’s an awesome advice the problem is that most people don’t use them very much the average meta Quest is used multiple times physically it’s expensing they call it dust uh so you guys talked about that on your shirt yes yeah yeah yeah and we talked about Pico as well which is interesting because I saw a stat the other day that uh the peak of four headset is actually the fastest growing headset that’s being used on steamvr so these Gamers aren’t narrowly going to meta they’re wrenching out now and uh you know HTC coming out with new uh I had said as well that I think is going to release at CES and uh yeah there’s a bunch of new VR AR headsets coming out but there’s also sort of a division between uh you know ones that are going to be used with the smartphone which we see uh mostly in Asia as well like uh Oppo has one that’s used with the smartphone it’s basically extension where you get to see a screen um instead of having an actual television screen you put on the glasses and you have this you know personal screen it’s kind of a niche way of making it work I guess for now but we will be seeing more of these uh smartphone compatible devices as well as the Ray-Ban stories have you seen that yet no oh yeah ray-ban’s story these are really interesting so Ray-Ban actually did a collaboration with meta to come up with their own uh let’s say uh prototype glass because meta hasn’t initially come out with art classes yet so they’re collaborating with other companies like Ray-Ban to kind of test starters and see how it goes now we’re going to freeze uh they press around 200 to 300 and they’re kind of neat you know they they have a dual five Mega five megapixel cameras they have three microphones a voice touch control that and it comes in a charging case so this is kind of like a step uh getting towards better uh AR VR glasses like we’ll be seeing with the Apple AR VR glasses which will be an entirely different price range likely around three thousand you know makes sense for Apple to do the same right because they already have such a dominant position with the smartphone and bear in mind you know these this these last two generations of uh iPhone have already got Ultra wideband connectivity built into them so that it means it’d be very easy to stick an accessory on your face that doesn’t need to have all the battery power for um processing and for network connectivity you have all that with your phone um so then you said strategy then is it’s uh it’s an extension of the phone as opposed to a replacement for the phone clearly meta wants to make it a replacement right so you’re going to see two strategies emerge here uh an incremental strategy where we where incumbent companies will reinforce or buttress their position by just making the AR VR device an accessory and then another the displacement Theory which would be you know companies like meta where you get rid of the smartphone completely and you wear some sort of headset it’ll be interesting battle uh so yeah great we’re going to start to see that battle happen this year anyone want to make a forecast about who’s going to win the AR and VR sweepstakes ooh hard to say I mean I’d like to I’d like to think that meta is going to still come back and survive but I I like to see some new game changers I give it 50 50 that meta will rain on but we shall see we shall see I wanna see what the new HTC headset is as well because they had a lot of potential but it hasn’t quite delivered yet I mean it does have the advantage of the fact that you can say you don’t need to buy an expensive phone to do this right um and so there is I think you know there’s gonna you know it’s the analogy would be Android versus Apple right is that or you know Samsung a lot more people would be happy to buy a Samsung a little bit of lower price range um than than an iPhone right um candidly I’m surprised that Google hasn’t applied the exact same strategy here of not necessarily building the devices but providing the software in order to extend their advertising uh and the other element is if you look at the analogy of um you know the the early mobile phone ecosystems where the expectation was that you know the mobile companies would have that Advantage well they lost that advantage and it was mainly around Hardware right but it was around operating system of the hardware so then if you use the analogy it depends really on the operating system of the a AR and the connectivity of it and the work effect that happens there and things like that it doesn’t necessarily depend on you know that pedigree of who’s produced better devices on mobile in the past right it clearly doesn’t because companies like Motorola and Nokia and Erickson were the dominant players you know they bended the mobile phone business and they all got blown away like all those companies just got completely sideswiped by Google and apple uh I think we’re probably likely to see something like that I would never bet against Apple so my betting is going to be Apple’s going to win they don’t release products until they know they work the first generation is never the one to pay attention to it’s always going to be the next two just like Microsoft so we’ll see something from Apple at some ungodly price point two thousand dollars or something it’ll probably be pretty impressive and it’ll be Out Of Reach but developers will buy and they’ll start to build cool experiences and one thing we know it will be tightly integrated into Apple’s ecosystem because that’s what they have to defend all leading up to the Apple car

what do you think the applications are going to be because the Federal Trade Commission is trying to block meta from doing a fitness app they wanted to acquire a fitness app and meta’s fighting that as well uh that’s another thing you know I I think it’s not only going to be Fitness but I think the health care implications you know of this on an overall basis um you know being able to self-diagnose and things like that it’s just incredible to sort of see how you know the educational impact of this all of that changes the way we think about um you know um the current system so so care definitely needs to be decentralized that’s for sure and we need to call it like v-commerce or m-commerce Vision Commerce or unfortunately yeah we’re gonna get a new a new acronym uh you know I think that creativity tools are a space to keep an eye on I’ve always been a huge fan of tilt brush which is one of the earliest VR apps and it’s one of my favorites because you can make stuff I imagine that in these Virtual Worlds we’re all going to be creating things and so we’ll need better tools for doing that so you probably see all this automation we’ve seen in uh generating images it’ll get modified or adapted to generating 3D things 3D objects and 3D worlds and they’ll probably be a suite of VR Creator tools that allow you to build environments and share them with friends which by the way is something I think would be kind of fun to do that would that would certainly change social media uh maybe for the better yeah well let’s take a quick break take a break yeah we will skip our usual rapid fire round uh let’s take a little pause here stay tuned this is the forecast episode for 2023 and Beyond we’ll be right back right back after this short break provoked media is proud to sponsor produce and support the futurist podcast provoke.fm is a global podcast Network and content creation company with the world’s leading fintech podcast and radio show Breaking Banks and of course it’s spin-off podcast breaking Banks Europe breaking Banks Asia Pacific and the fintech 5. but we also produce the official phenovate podcast Tech on reg emerge everywhere the podcast of the Financial Health Network and next-gen Banker for information about all our podcasts go to provoke.fm or check out breaking Banks the world’s number one fintech podcast and radio show

welcome back to the futurists we have a week of forecasts what are the things we’re going to see over the next uh you know 12 months in 2023 that are really going to be game changers in terms of the longer term future and uh you know we’ve been getting into that before the break um you know AR VR the metaverse smart glasses uh you know AI developments and so forth but uh let’s uh let’s continue so Rob what what do you think about uh the progress on electric vehicles so the last couple years has been extraordinary the progress has been tremendous we’ve seen uh you can see it’s one of those technologies that you can see on the street you notice it and suddenly electric vehicles are everywhere charging stations are everywhere and you know Brett for a lot the longest time I thought that Tesla had a lock on the future of the car and clearly I’m not the only one who thought that because Tesla was the most valuable Auto Company at one point the valuation of the company was greater than all other auto companies combined which seemed kind of extraordinary and and remember the the German auto manufacturers threw their hands in the air and they said in terms of AI and software Tesla has this beat they’re five or six years ahead and so forth so um in recent years Tesla has really defied the Skeptics and emerged as the preeminent electric car company in the world Brett I’m gonna make a bold prediction here um I think that era has come to an end uh I think that Tesla is going to be challenged and I think that actually they already are a challenge that’s not much of a prediction here’s my prediction I think that in the next two years by 2025 Elon Musk will no longer be the CEO of Tesla uh and I know there’s a ton of Tesla fans and a ton of Elon Musk fans out there so give me a chance to explain where I’m coming from and then a fire away you didn’t you didn’t say Twitter you said Tesla right Tesla that’s exactly right so a big big factor though is the is is the investment in Twitter the Takeover of Twitter is is preoccupied um musk it’s quite obvious and as a result uh Tesla’s in trouble uh Tesla’s stock was down to 65 in 2022 and already this year we’re only a few days into 2020 2023 and Tesla’s stock is down a further five percent uh Now Stocks go up and down uh the stock market itself has been volatile and so forth so there’s a lot of reasons to say like well hang on a second why is that such a big deal I mean fundamentally they’re still doing very well the top selling EVS in the world last month that is true that was a Tesla Model 3 and a Tesla Model y you know that’s right and it’s the most profitable car company in the world and that’s what people like about it it’s what investors have liked about it but there is a concern that musk has become distracted and I think there’s a bigger set of issues that come along with that it’s not just that is distracted by by the Twitter acquisition I think that’s palpably obvious uh to everybody who’s being paying attention it’s that musk is no longer cool back in 2010 Elon Musk could do a guest appearance in Iron Man in a Disney film uh Iron Man uh because he was kind of like Tony Stark and people thought of him as this guy who could solve every problem in the world he seemed like he seemed like kind of a cool guy today musk is no longer cool and when he shows up at a Dave Chappelle uh you know Dave Chappelle Show he gets booed uh he gets booed by the crowd right so he’s no longer seen as cool and it’s not just that he’s not cool it’s that the people who buy Teslas tend to be blue State liberals Democrats uh Tesla vehicles are not a red State phenomenon and um when musk took over Twitter and started spouting mag announcements and repeating Q anons conspiracies theories and so forth he was sending a signal and I don’t think it’s a very helpful signal to uh people who might be considering Teslas here in Los Angeles one thing we notice is that um celebrities love to Signal their virtue by what they drive and you know back in 2008 it was cool to like show up at the Oscars in a Prius right so back in the early days of electric or hybrid vehicles the Prius was kind of like the celebrity statement uh then it became the Tesla well today Tesla is our taxis and the cool car is a lucid or um iridium right so it’s been displaced and if you want a high-end fancy you know uh publicity statement about your your environmental legitimacy it doesn’t have to be a Tesla there’s other choices out there that are frankly more fashionable so this idea that Tesla’s uncool isn’t just a matter of uh musk’s personality it’s also connected to the car itself remember you know the the Tesla 3 the you just mentioned that car came out in 2017 and it hasn’t changed substantially nor has the Tesla Model S these cars haven’t really changed a great deal they’re they’re overdue for an update and there’s a lot of competition coming Brad this is the year when every major automaker is going to introduce their competitor some of these cars will be better some will be worse some will be cheaper some will be more expensive so there’s going to be a range of competition but the point there is consumers will have a choice and in terms of the competition Tesla doesn’t have any lock-in I’ve often wondered what’s the lock-in factor is it the charger network is it the AI Network that’s you know where all the cars are learning from each other it’s apparently uh there’s less lock-in for customers with Automotive so what’s really interesting is you know the brands you mentioned as competitors to Tesla rivian and Lucid not also from you know the big uh vehicle producers um the big guys the traditional Company still really haven’t got the design elements because that was a secondary um consideration you know fuel efficiency and other things where the uh the category you know the way they would specialize and so you know when you’ve got EVs and you just you know um with plans for higher levels of automation you’ve got to think about the cockpit and the car very differently from a design perspective and the manufacturing process right like big automakers are really great at making internal combustion engines they’ve been doing it for 100 years right they’re not necessarily great at making electric vehicles and that’s been evident right like you know the electric vehicles that we’ve seen from the traditional car companies candidly haven’t sold as much they’re very expensive they don’t have their same range the big big battle coming in 2023 will be the battle between Ford and Tesla Tesla cyber truck coming out at seventy thousand dollars and the Ford F-150 the electric version of the F-150 you know a lot of folks think of Ford as a car company but they stopped making automobiles they stopped making sedans uh Ford now makes SUVs and trucks and the Ford F-150 is the most popular vehicle in the United States so there’s a lot at stake here for Ford it’s really an existential matter for them and they’re coming out of the gate with a uh with a truck that costs about thirty thousand dollars less than the Cyber truck it’s going to be it’s gonna have far less range so you know if you want to have a model that’s comparable they’ll be probably pretty comparable in terms of price but the battle will be really between Ford Loyalists and uh people who want that weird looking cyber truck so that’s going to be the battle to watch and that happens this year it’s gonna be one of the most exciting things in the world right now like old Auto versus new auto um but one thing to bear in mind is the recession uh and these cars are expensive electric vehicles cost on average about 50 percent more than an internal combustion car that’s comparable so a regular internal combustion car costs about forty five thousand dollars and the average electric vehicle cost about 68 000 so it’s almost a fifty percent uh differential there and in a recession I think that’s gonna that’s gonna weigh heavily on people’s decisions whether or not to purchase electric or to stick with the internal internal combustion cars that they’ve had so anyway for all these factors I look at this and I say wow Tesla stock is down almost 70 percent in the space at just over a year uh the CEOs clearly distracted and he’s no longer considered to be Tony Stark he’s now considered to be kind of this Maga boob and so uh we’ll see if um we’ll see if he’ll last my prediction is that he’ll be ousted from the role as Tesla CEO by 2025. yeah you know I am I I sort of like to think he focuses on SpaceX anyway

you know going back to Ford actually do you know the new uh Ford Mustangs there’s the EV it’s the electric Ford Mustang I mean talk about a combustion engine loving uh types I mean geez I mean to see the freaking Mustang turn into an EV what this is mind-blowing yeah I mean actually it’s kind of cool that Ford was able to do that right that’s a pretty big pivot for a very traditional auto company and it’s not a bad car and they’re sold out you know there’s a waiting list for them so clearly it’s got some appeal there’s a waiting list for all these cars I mean speaking of Tesla anyone who’s been through the Tesla uh purchasing process knows that you know it’s it’s very unique compared to the old way of buying cars you’d walk in you know someone actually help you no no more like you wait seven or eight months maybe it comes in on a barge maybe it doesn’t and when it arrives you know um no one really helps you just uh find out where the car is in a parking lot you drive it away it’s almost like getting a zip car you know oh is that how it works you just go find it it’s sitting there waiting for you yeah that’s that’s your car over there that’s it they don’t show you how to use it or anything there’s an introduction video when you start it up you know and we didn’t even get the introduction video I don’t know what happened to them but no no no so welcome to the Future yeah I hope you enjoy the heck out of it uh good for you for making this making that switch I’m I’m still sticking with an old gasoline-powered BMW these days I’ve been hesitant to get into it we want to do in 2023 we want to take a portion converter to an electric vehicle like an old style Porsche so they’re they’re coming yeah that’s true conversion kits are cool but but they’re coming like the the high-end Auto German automakers are coming out with their electric cars and it’ll be really interesting to see what the landscape looks like so anyway good year for electric vehicles there’s gonna be a ton of choice and a bunch of turmoil in that space uh we’ll see if Tesla can hang on to their position as being the most profitable maker of automobiles in the world Brad if you’ve got other predictions or forecasts to share with our crowd probably no um yes uh no I think one of the other things is the next two years expanding a little bit beyond just the next 12 months next two years we are going to see more extreme weather events we were signaling this in the earlier part of the show so let’s jump into into this because um you know the one thing that we had in 2022 is we broke all of the records um historically for Eco refugees um and this is primarily because of events like Pakistan and so forth but we also broke all the records in terms of heat you know and extreme heat levels um and so this unfortunately is going to continue um you know the Eco Refugee situation with 65 million Eco refugees this year I wouldn’t be surprised if those numbers start to look normal over the next couple of years because of these extreme weather events yeah I think that’s right I would I totally concur um my prediction would be that we are going to see the hottest years um the hottest weather in history in recorded history in 2023 and 2024 um my reason for saying that is that we are in the middle of what’s known as an element cycle and uh you know for the last two years it’s supposed to be a cold and wet time um ending right now here in California we’re having this uh atmospheric River condition you know this torrent of rain that’s coming it’s much overdue or welcome it because we’ve had drought here for the last seven years so we welcome them but that’s a side effect of La Nina cool and wet cycle and as you just pointed out despite the fact it’s been a la nina cycle we’ve had the hottest summer in history last summer in in uh in Asia in China in India all across Europe all across the United States we broke heat records and that’s supposed to be during you know that’s what’s in what is supposedly the cool and wet cycle what’s coming next in 2023 and 2024 is El Nino and that’s the hot dry cycle uh and that means that although um all these places that are getting inundated with water now are going to be green and Lush and then they’re going to dry out sometime in the summer 2023 so we’re going to see a range of wildfires all across the the west in the United States and other parts of the world that got wet weather this year but I think we’re going to start to see record uh temperatures in other words we’re saying that last summer is the coldest summer you’re going to have even though it was a record-breaking Heat Wave we’re going to start to see even hotter Summers ahead absolutely no it’ll be hot everyone’s summer yeah is it super hot now in Thailand in the summer or is it not changing actually interestingly it’s got more moderate here so it’s gone from being more you know it’s um more moderate but in Chiang Mai in Bangkok at least but Chiang Mai apparently gets a lot hotter so it’s getting into 42 43 degrees Celsius which is uncharacteristically warm so um yeah I don’t know why Bangkok is getting slightly cooler but um yeah it’s manageable I mean we’ve been here during the summer a couple of times and it’s manageable it’s still in the 80s over here so it’s quite warm and a nice change compared to uh North Carolina at this time it’s always it’s always hot and humid uh that’s true year round even uh in that part of the world one of the things you mentioned Brett is uh people are getting displaced uh in um climate refugees I think that’s a really big topic uh because certainly here in the United States immigration and illegal immigration is a gigantic issue that is constantly a conflict at the border and many people attribute those uh those immigrants to people who are seeking better Economic Opportunity but one thing we don’t seem to take into account in the United States climate related too yeah that’s right they’re leaving because there is the climate is unsustainable where they live it’s it’s no longer sustainable uh I know a couple people from Honduras and they said to me that you know they still have family back in Honduras and they said we can’t go back we could never go back we could never live there because the places where we were raised used to be very fertile and you you could be a farmer you could grow things you could grow fruit trees and so forth they said that’s over now it’s dry as dust and there’s no way to grow anything and that’s why that’s one of the reasons why people are being displaced and why they’re leaving so to your point Brett it’s going to happen right climate refugees yeah are a fact it’s going to continue it’s not just people who are being displaced by conflicts but we are going to have moral conflicts over water more conflicts over resources growing in a agricultural land and so forth and that’s going to displace a lot more people uh what we don’t have and what I can only go after a pessimistic forecast on is uh the political Vision to anticipate that and actually I’m sorry I mean we’ve got the opposite right we’ve still got people arguing that you know climate change is not man-made and it’s like it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter whether it’s man-made we need a plan to deal with this you know um let’s just figure that out but you know uh you you even have up until fairly recently you know the last president of the United States saying it was a Chinese hoax I mean this isn’t this is incredible that we’re so close to these effects on the climate and these massive changes uh in terms of global immigration Trends and food production and Trends you know food scarcity and things like that flooding of over 500 cities on on coasts around the world and where we don’t even accept that it’s going to happen yet I mean that’s just insane you know but uh I wonder how long that’ll persist how long do you think fake uh this idea that you can just boldface lie your way through a political career do you think that’ll persist in 2023 right now we’re starting to see some pushback here in the United States Well it can’t be right go ahead no there’s definitely going to be a big change this year I I predict that there’s going to be more uh more restlessness let’s just say when it comes to uh both the migration issues climate issues and overall just a political environment you know in the U.S heading up to 2024 oh it’s going to be a big year this year just all across the board we’re going to see a lot of change but it’s necessary change you know we need action taken absolutely so hopefully uh hopefully it’ll be some plans will be put into place to help prevent some total uh dire scenario but yes 2023 will be a big year for sure the one thing I don’t think we will quite get in 2023 is I don’t think we’re going to get an invasion of Taiwan but I think there’s going to be a lot more saber rattling around Taiwan so um and there’s going to be more challenging of Us’s military will against uh China just testing the waters there a little bit just to let the us know that China is getting more and more serious about this every day and so unless there is a diplomatic solution to this and the Diplomatic solution is probably that Taiwan agrees to become part of an economic um uh you know alliance with uh China or something like that that that’s the one compromise is possible but I don’t think she is necessarily prepared to make that compromise but I don’t I don’t think there’s going to be military conflict over Taiwan but I think there’s going to be more pressure put on on the US’s willingness to respond I I agree you see that in the relationship between Russia and China um the Chinese are are supportive of of Russia but they’re keeping themselves at arm’s length they don’t want to get caught in the crosshairs of the United States they don’t want to get dragged into the conflict in any major way uh so they’re trying to maintain a little bit of distance because I think they’re taking away the lesson that maybe uh you know the the Russians should have been paying more attention to which is that the rest of the world can actually to find the rest let me see when I say the rest of the world what I mean is Western Europe and the United States in Canada and we need that on energy we need that coming together on energy production um you know and the standards applied there we need that to come together in terms of corporate missions that the corporations must serve the greater economy and the needs of the people you know corporations that have been responsible for climate change I think again those brands are going to fall out of favor rather quickly I sure hope that happens you know one of the things to build on a point you guys were making a moment ago uh before the break about artificial intelligence is the role of AI in Warfare has been predicted in forecasts for years and years and the very first issue of Wired Magazine back in 1991 or two uh forecasted the the future of War cyber War they call it at the time um now we’re seeing evidence that drones make a material difference a material impact and it’s not just predator drones you know navigating above trying to take out a terrorist leader or something but now swarms of drones coordinated drone attacks we’re starting to see evidence of that in the conflict in the Ukraine and it’s pretty clear that every military in the world is paying close attention to this that’s going to cause a substantial change in national security policy and defense strategy but it’s also going to cause a kind of new arms race um I can see now that every country in the world is going to equip itself with some kind of drone outfit and they’re gonna the problem is that a lot of these are going to be autonomous right so you need to start building ethical guidelines around the use of automated ai-based weapons which we don’t have on a global agreement on that as we don’t and we know that Chinese are developing them specifically they’re developing drone systems to attack aircraft carriers so it’s very very overtly a threat against the United States and we’ll be hearing plenty more about that from the republicans in Congress in this election that’s a very easy prediction to make what do you think about the moon what do you think about the race to the moon uh and the idea of uh I would like to see Adam Miss get boots on the ground in 2024 I don’t think it’s going to happen next year but I do think what we will see I mean next year I mean 2020 this year yeah you know as that old Habit to Break um but this year um I do think we will see the the first um second maybe third orbital launch of the Starship as a test program which gets us to um the Artemis program in 2024 so um you know we because the SLS could get us uh preliminary um sort of boots on the ground but bigger groups of astronauts and when it really starts to become you know an effort to set up a base on the moon and so forth requires the Starship so next year we’ll see some really Foundation flights for Starship and hopefully uh it can get Elon a bit better focused yeah that’s right well when you say next year are you saying 2024 2023 2023 we’ll see the Starship program expand 2024 we’ll see boots on the moon and the moon and that will be the Orion program with the SLS initially and there will probably be 2025 2026 where Artemis uses the starship and what’s the story with the with the space station because I hear that it’s in kind of like late stage of disrepair uh or it’s in need of repair um and and is that something that people plan to do or is the relationship I think the current commission the current operation goes to like 2026 something like that and then it has to be commercially driven so at that point they’ll ask players like SpaceX and others um you know to to look at taking it over um they will still rent um space on the space station NASA and the Russians um Russians may also keep ownership of their side so it’s not a guarantee that um the entire space station is going to be turned commercial but at least the U.S side will probably be so tourists will be visiting there um you know it could be used by uh SpaceX as a developmental base for moving the crews to Mars programs and things like that so there’s a lot of potential use of the space station I know I’m getting totally spaced out on everyone but and Mining operations as well yeah yeah yeah asteroid mining big topic probably not for 2023 but definitely out there and there’s plenty of billionaires that are chasing that dream uh the idea is you know someone’s gonna someone’s gonna send a robot spacecraft to an asteroid or asteroid that’s made out of platinum or some kind of a very very valuable material and they’ll become the first space trillionaire like go look up the movie you didn’t see but that’s why the Moon is important because they’ll bring it back to Luna Robert though the fuel that they’ll create for these robotic probes um will be out of the water ice that’s found on the moon so the Moon is the the stepping stone to be able to do these things great real estate development on the moon next on the futurists I think that wraps us up for the show anyway it’s a good way to finish it so um great uh Katie thanks for coming back on yeah good to see you thank you for having me yeah absolutely well Happy New Year to both of you and happy New Year to our listeners thank you very kindly folks for listening to the futurist thanks for sharing it with your friends and thanks for all those who’ve given us some suggestions and feedback and guidance on the kinds of speakers you’d like to see on the show and the kinds of questions you’d like us to ask them that’s incredibly helpful for us and it’s also very helpful folks when you’re when you’re listening if you give us a five star review on uh apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts uh this helps other people find the show and that’s been an immense benefit for us in the first six months of this program we’ve grown by Leaps and Bounds we’re so deeply grateful to everybody really it’s the best holiday gift you could possibly imagine the support that we’ve gotten from our fans we really really appreciate it thank you all very very much for listening to the show and we’re psyched to bring you another year of the futurists big shout out to Kevin and to everybody else who’s been helping us with the show we have a fantastic crew provoke media and we are grateful to you for that support and um we’ll look forward to bringing you more stay tuned we’ll see you again oh we’ll see you all again very soon in the future future

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