[Music] this week on the futurists in recent years Tesla has really defied theSkeptics and emerged as the preeminent electric car company in the world BrettI'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-hostbusiness partner Brett King hey hey yes and this week we've got a special guestKatie King hi Katie Miss metaverse hello I'm back I'm back happy to be here 2023let's go happy to have you back on the show uh so you folks are over in Thailand right now I can see this nighttime where you are at the daytime where I am thanks for staying up late to record this special edition of thefuturists no problem welcome let's get into it all right this is the week that we're gonna take the Bold stab at thefuture each week on the futurist we ask our guests to make a bold forecast or even a predictionsometimes they're game to do it and sometimes they'll make forecasts and predictions and talk about what theyEnvision for the future going all the way out 30 40 years out this episode is our chance um we'regoing 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 ifyou're listening this is the chance to find out whether we're right wrong well how Shall We Begin then Brett it'sbeen a tumultuous year 2022 was a surprising year you know looking back atit I don't think many people would have forecasted that Russia would create the largest land invasion in Europe sinceWorld War II that happened as a result you know yeswhich is uh we tried to deny it for a while because we did haveum really good employment numbers which is counter-intuitive to a traditionalrecession so this is the argument for why um you know the Biden administration ofcourse didn't didn't report the recession in the early early quarters but it's pretty clear now that globallyum you know the economy is depressed the question is how long does that continue into2023 I guess right well and everybody's saying that this year there will be a recession I haven't heard anybody whohasn'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 arecession um one of the interesting things to notice about the last three economicresets or economic Corrections is um in the past when there was arecession uh when the recession would last a while you know last a year and a half or two years but in the last threeor sessions to the United States employment levels took a very long time to restabilize they did eventuallyrestabilize but they took years many many years and what happened in the meantime was automationum so you know employers took the opportunity during a recession to replace human workers with theirsoftware automation or robotic systems uh Brett what's your nameyeah the optionality on that is in obviously um increasing So you you're going tostart to see experiments on The Fringe of these um spaces like in the legalindustry um you know and Healthcare and so forth you're seeing specialization so inhealthcare you've got you know oncology research looking at trying to get those diagnosis is better and so forth you'vegot surgical robots doing components what you haven't got right now is the sort of administrative side of thingsbut 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 ofthe healthcare system at least in the United States you're going to be looking after trying to uh Robo you know arobotic process automate play robotic process automation to those areas right so um and in the same process hopefullyum you know getting the cost of it down so I think that's a possibility off the back of the recession for sure I thinkit's true I think healthcare is is rape for reinvention and it's ripe for some kind of streamlining anytime you have anindustry 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 industrythat's ripe for disruption uh we had on our show in last year we had Dr Philip elvada on the show and hewas talking about Ai and Healthcare and how to drive down the cost curve his example was the simple diagnostic thatyou 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 thatnow can be automated uh and that saves about 250 dollars per visit per officevisit so healthcare companies have a great deal of economic interest in automationno doubt we'll see more and more of that uh it looks like diagnosis is a big area you know tracking and identifying andspotting patterns and then um and making a correct uh and you know I think the evidence we've seen with the generativeAI stuff you know the um the art generated and the language generated AI stuff we are seeing that these deeplearning algorithms are getting getting much better at collecting data for reference purposes and that's whenyou're talking about the advances in Diagnostics it's the same sort of sort of models they're building on theimagery that's used in those disciplines so um you know there should be some crossover in terms of the advancementsbeing 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 likeum uh chat GPT and open AI is uh Dolly 2 and stable diffusion and other systemsfor generating images that was another big surprise for 2022 and those things existed down one had existed for sometime beforehand but the rapid Improvement I think was what caught people off guard I started paying attention in the springof 2022 and by Fall 2022 those programs were quite good they were not that greatin the spring and they were kind of weak in the summer but you could see visible progress week after week after week andI happened to be connected to a lot of folks who do art and some of them jumped into this whole hog like they just wentfor it and decided to master the idea of right prompts for image generating appsthat's a whole new skill set now right yeah but you know it's not it's not very hard to replicate you already havepeople claiming that someone ripped them off because they stole their prompt which is just sort of I think funny since the systems are learned aretrained on huge amounts of artistic work that other people did and so like who's ripping offum 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 businessor you know the the illustration business that are going to be threatened of course those will be there are manyother fields that are going to get disrupted you can see advertising um especially social media marketing beingautomated uh to a level that's that's hard to imagine and um you know remember Microsoft has thecode you need as a creative director really yeah that's exactly so the human discernment and prompts are really goingto be the place for humans to play and where to migrate I didn't even think about that aspect ofit 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 anagency for when you can go to chat GPT and say write a marketing email in five paragraphs that sells the virtues ofthis 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 uhyou 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 gpt4into programs like Microsoft Word Outlook and PowerPoint and so justimagine you know as soon you'll be able to say to um to PowerPoint you'll be able to talk to PowerPoint and saycrank out a 10-page slide deck in the Sequoia format for a startup company in healthcare and it'll generate itautomatically and it might use you know Imaging to make make the images for the slides as well well what do you envisionfor 2023 threat when it comes to things like chat jptwell you know we do know the version 4 from open AI Chachi bt4 will be releaseduh probably around the middle of next year and if the Improvement that we've seen between version 3 and 3.5 or whatwe known as Chachi BT uh these days it sort of is consistent with what we seein version four um then already you know prepare to have your minds blown but the word on thestreet is actually that gbt4 will make a much more significant leap in capabilityso um I think we're going to have the first AI that passes a touring testconvincingly and I think that's going to come out of chaturbet24 I would guess that you could already uhthey could already pass the the touring test what's what is the touring test for those who are listening uh well in 1953I think it was Alan Turing who was the um great mind behindum the code breaking machine um that broke their Enigma in second world warum and he found founded actually this sort of principle on thinking machines and what would Define a thinking machineand so I think it's 10 um parts to the test but essentially if you can have a conversation with an AIand not know it's not a human then that's essentially um the core element of the Turing testso your forecast is that this is the year 2023. yeah we're gonna we're gonna do that decisively or at least we'llhave the claim that it can do it right exactly I think we're already there what's happening too is um you knowthey're rushing to start to be able to fingerprint uh chat gbt so this way yeaha lot of people are going to be using it to create essays and whatnot in fact they actually made a new term for itcalled a algorithm so instead of plagiarism it's uh algerism because it'sAI assisted plagiarism so uh you know actually I think the next step my prediction is is that uh we're going tobe seeing people working for the AIS so they'll be actually jumping in takingthese uh AI plagiarized Works let's say and being created a custom version of itthat 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 nowit's kind of interesting yeah that's true that's a good point in fact you could argue you that we already areworking 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 agood prompt really that's the AI training us how to talk to it how do you you know how to find the right words toget 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'sfree labor like people have been gleefully volunteering to train these AIS and that's a ton of money that thesecompanies have saved in the process uh so I think you're right Katie that the AI is going to condition the workforceit's going to train the workforce even as we're training it how to think like us or how to talk like us imagine evenif um like a band like the Beatles the remaining members of The Beatles decidedto release new music that was AI generated in the style of Beatles um actually scary thought highly likelyum 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 wecan even we can even generate the artists that are dead and bring them back to life keep them working forever in a virtual formGrim stuff isn't that an episode of Black Mirrorunfortunately that's one of the things when we start talking about the future it sure does seem like Black Mirror yeahyou know but but part of that is the human behavioral element and I think if we could get uh people reallyum sort of focused on Mission which I think you know it won't come in the next couple of years but could comeafter that particularly with the stuff around climate change um what what do you think about climateissues this year Robert I've got a lot to share on that subject but you know before we go there let me just offer oneother thought here which is about games and AI because it kind of links together those two ideas okay so in the gamingindustry gaming is an interesting field and we're going to have uh Dean Takahashi come out uh in a long timeObserver almost in the game Ministry so he'll tell us about the future of games in a in a coming episode The futuriststhere's a preview of that there's a big transaction that's about to happen uh Microsoft wants to buy ActivisionActivision is one of the biggest independent Studios that's left right gaming industry has gone through atremendous wave of consolidation over the last decade the biggest gaming companies in the world are not Americanuh Chinese company 10 cent is the biggest gaming company in the world Sony is also a major player and soMicrosoft's trying to scale up to compete now there's a lot more to the story than that because as we've talkedabout on this show Brett several times gaming is really the place we're going to incubate the metaverse so if themetaverse or some sort of 3D world really does happen it's very likely to occur inside of an online game that's athat's a great starting point for it and arguably today the best versions of the metaverse are inside of game worlds likefortnite um so Microsoft's making a huge play in this space the their focus is moreindustrial like simulated 3D environments for for business but thisis their their consumer aspect is to go after but they've got Minecraft don't forget right they do yeah so they doMinecraft 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 metaverseeverybody'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 thebest users and Microsoft's been been acquiring a lot of uh a lot of um communities gaming communities they'vebeen very focused focused on that they also own LinkedIn so they have business Community as well and um so so anywaythat's some of Microsoft's strategy however they've run into a lot of resistance with this acquisition so thiswould be if Microsoft were to buy Activision it would be the largest acquisition in the gaming business andum both the EU and the United States government have uh have indicated thatthey're going to fight it and the U.S is suing Microsoft to stop the stop it that's a um the Federal Trade Commissionuh which is led by headed by lean on any trust basis that's exactly right soMicrosoft's been down this road before uh what's interesting is um the the present Microsoft has resisted it hesaid 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 fightmy forecast is that Microsoft will prevail I think that the U.S government's goingto 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 theworld um and if they don't allow this merger to occur you're going to have twowounded Giants in the United States who are both vulnerable or in some respects to these larger International Playersyeah so we'll find out this year but anyway in the gaming space I think uh a deal with a lot of implications for themetaverse and immersive 3D worlds well on that what aboutum what about the Apple reality glasses coming out um it could be later this month you know so yeah that's going tobe huge I mean not only is it just going to be about the augmented reality and the head mounted display Techum 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 ofapps coming like um because the visualization of content and you know you know and making itsmartly interactive is going to be such an art it's going to be very different from mobile so you have to have newcontent created for this as well which is going to create a whole new series of businesses off of those augmentedreality apps so um that you know we're actually going to see the start of that this year I think that's right uheverything up till this point has been preliminary and and as a historical parallel I'd point to uh companies likerim and palm and Nokia in the mid-2000s those companies were all making a version of a smartphone you know sort oflike a Proto type of a smartphone at the time they were called smartphones but they weren't that smart and um theyweren'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 2005to buy any kind of downloadable item the finting um you know boom is is due to the Mobilesmartphone you know yeah that's right it extended into really every aspect of lifeuh so the big question is will AR and maybe VR augmented reality or virtualreality or mixed reality or extended reality will these devices replace the smartphone will they be an extension ofthe smartphone will they further entrench companies like Apple and Google in this space or will new a new companydisplace them you know Meta Meta has been betting the bank on displacing appis a kind of an open rivalry between the Facebook and appleum and um yeah Mike Mark Zuckerberg's not has not hesitated to throw billions of dollars at the problemyou know arguably the meta Quest is the best virtual reality device I like it it's it's an awesome advice the problemis that most people don't use them very much the average meta Quest is used multiple times physically it'sexpensing they call it dust uh so you guys talked about that on your shirt yes yeah yeah yeah and we talked about Picoas well which is interesting because I saw a stat the other day that uh the peak of four headset is actually thefastest growing headset that's being used on steamvr so these Gamers aren'tnarrowly going to meta they're wrenching out now and uh you know HTC coming outwith new uh I had said as well that I think is going to release at CES and uhyeah there's a bunch of new VR AR headsets coming out but there's also sort of a division between uh you knowones that are going to be used with the smartphone which we see uh mostly in Asia as well like uh Oppo has one that'sused with the smartphone it's basically extension where you get to see a screenum 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 ofmaking it work I guess for now but we will be seeing more of these uh smartphone compatible devices as well asthe Ray-Ban stories have you seen that yet no oh yeah ray-ban's story these are reallyinteresting so Ray-Ban actually did a collaboration with meta to come up with their own uh let's say uh prototypeglass because meta hasn't initially come out with art classes yet so they're collaborating with other companies likeRay-Ban to kind of test starters and see how it goes now we're going to freeze uhthey press around 200 to 300 and they're kind of neat you know they they have a dual five Mega five megapixel camerasthey have three microphones a voice touch control that and it comes in a charging case so this is kind of like astep uh getting towards better uh AR VR glasses like we'll be seeing with theApple AR VR glasses which will be an entirely different price range likely around three thousandyou know makes sense for Apple to do the same right because they already have such a dominant position with thesmartphone and bear in mind you know these this these last two generations of uh iPhonehave 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 needto have all the battery power for um processing and for network connectivity you have all that with yourphone um so then you said strategy then is it's uh it's an extension of the phone as opposed to a replacement for thephone clearly meta wants to make it a replacement right so you're going to see two strategies emerge here uh anincremental strategy where we where incumbent companies will reinforce or buttress their position by just makingthe AR VR device an accessory and then another the displacement Theory whichwould 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 uhso yeah great we're going to start to see that battle happen this year anyone want to make a forecast aboutwho's going to win the AR and VR sweepstakes ooh hard to say I mean I'd like to I'dlike to think that meta is going to still come back and survive but I I like to see some new game changers I give it50 50 that meta will rain on but we shall see we shall see I wanna see whatthe new HTC headset is as well because they had a lot of potential but it hasn't quite delivered yetI 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 rightum and so there is I think you know there's gonna you know it's the analogy would be Android versus Apple right isthat or you know Samsung a lot more people would be happy to buy a Samsung a little bit of lower price rangeum than than an iPhone right um candidly I'm surprised that Google hasn't applied the exact same strategy here of notnecessarily building the devices but providing the software in order to extend their advertising uh and theother element is if you look at the analogy of um you know the the early mobile phoneecosystems where the expectation was that you know the mobile companies wouldhave that Advantage well they lost that advantage and it was mainly around Hardware right but it was aroundoperating system of the hardware so then if you use the analogy it depends really on the operating system of the a AR andthe connectivity of it and the work effect that happens there and things like that it doesn't necessarily dependon you know that pedigree of who's produced better devices on mobile in thepast right it clearly doesn't because companies like Motorola and Nokia and Erickson were the dominant players youknow they bended the mobile phone business and they all got blown away like all those companies just got completely sideswiped by Google andapple uh I think we're probably likely to see something like that I would never bet against Apple so my betting is goingto be Apple's going to win they don't release products until they know they work the first generation is never theone to pay attention to it's always going to be the next two just like Microsoft so we'll see something fromApple at some ungodly price point two thousand dollars or something it'll probably be pretty impressive and it'llbe 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'secosystem because that's what they have to defend all leading up to the Apple carwhat do you think the applications are going to be because the Federal Trade Commission is trying to block meta fromdoing 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 onlygoing to be Fitness but I think the health care implications you know of this on an overall basisum you know being able to self-diagnose and things like that it's just incredible to sort of see how you knowthe educational impact of this all of that changes the way we think about umyou know um the current system so so care definitely needs to be decentralized that's for sure and weneed to call it like v-commerce or m-commerce Vision Commerce or unfortunately yeah we're gonna get a newa 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 oftilt brush which is one of the earliest VR apps and it's one of my favorites because you can make stuffI imagine that in these Virtual Worlds we're all going to be creating things and so we'll need better tools for doingthat so you probably see all this automation we've seen in uh generating images it'll get modified or adapted togenerating 3D things 3D objects and 3D worlds and they'll probably be a suite of VR Creator tools that allow you tobuild 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 socialmedia uh maybe for the better yeah well let's take a quick break takea break yeah we will skip our usual rapid fire round uh let's take a littlepause here stay tuned this is the forecast episode for 2023 and Beyond we'll be right back right back afterthis short break provoked media is proud to sponsor produce and support the futurist podcastprovoke.fm is a global podcast Network and content creation company with theworld's leading fintech podcast and radio show Breaking Banks and of course it's spin-off podcast breaking BanksEurope breaking Banks Asia Pacific and the fintech 5. but we also produce the officialphenovate podcast Tech on reg emerge everywhere the podcast of the FinancialHealth Network and next-gen Banker for information about all our podcasts go toprovoke.fm or check out breaking Banks the world's number one fintech podcastand radio showwelcome back to the futurists we have a week of forecasts what are the thingswe're going to see over the next uh you know 12 months in 2023 that are really going to be game changers in terms ofthe longer term future and uh you know we've been getting into that before the breakum you know AR VR the metaverse smart glasses uh you know AI developments andso forth but uh let's uh let's continue so Rob what what do you think about uhthe progress on electric vehicles so the last couple years has been extraordinarythe progress has been tremendous we've seen uh you can see it's one of those technologies that you can see on thestreet you notice it and suddenly electric vehicles are everywhere charging stations are everywhere and youknow Brett for a lot the longest time I thought that Tesla had a lock on the future of the car and clearly I'm notthe 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 autocompanies combined which seemed kind of extraordinary and and remember the the German automanufacturers threw their hands in the air and they said in terms of AI and software Tesla has this beat they'refive or six years ahead and so forth so um in recent years Tesla has really defied the Skeptics and emerged as thepreeminent electric car company in the world Brett I'm gonna make a bold prediction here um I think that era has come to an enduh I think that Tesla is going to be challenged and I think that actually they already are a challenge that's notmuch of a prediction here's my prediction I think that in the next two years by 2025 Elon Musk will no longerbe the CEO of Tesla uh and I know there's a ton of Tesla fans and a ton of Elon Musk fans outthere so give me a chance to explain where I'm coming from and then a fire away you didn't youdidn't say Twitter you said Tesla right Tesla that's exactly right so a big big factor though is the is is theinvestment in Twitter the Takeover of Twitter is is preoccupied um musk it's quite obvious and as a result uh Tesla'sin trouble uh Tesla's stock was down to 65 in 2022 and already this year we'reonly a few days into 2020 2023 and Tesla's stock is down a further fivepercent uh Now Stocks go up and down uh the stock market itself has been volatile and so forth so there's a lotof 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 theworld last month that is true that was a Tesla Model 3 and a Tesla Model y youknow 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 butthere is a concern that musk has become distracted and I think there's a bigger set of issues that come along with thatit's not just that is distracted by by the Twitter acquisition I think that's palpably obvious uh to everybody who'sbeing paying attention it's that musk is no longer cool back in 2010 Elon Musk could do a guestappearance in Iron Man in a Disney film uh Iron Man uh because he was kind of like Tony Stark and people thought ofhim 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 heshows 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 nolonger 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 Stateliberals Democrats uh Tesla vehicles are not a red State phenomenon and um whenmusk took over Twitter and started spouting mag announcements and repeating Q anons conspiracies theories and soforth he was sending a signal and I don't think it's a very helpful signal to uh people who might be consideringTeslas here in Los Angeles one thing we notice is that um celebrities love to Signal theirvirtue 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 backin the early days of electric or hybrid vehicles the Prius was kind of like the celebrity statement uh then it becamethe Tesla well today Tesla is our taxis and the cool car is a lucid or umiridium right so it's been displaced and if you want a high-end fancy you know uh publicity statement about your yourenvironmental legitimacy it doesn't have to be a Tesla there's other choices out there that are frankly more fashionableso this idea that Tesla's uncool isn't just a matter of uh musk's personality it's also connected to the car itselfremember you know the the Tesla 3 the you just mentioned that car came out in 2017 and it hasn't changed substantiallynor has the Tesla Model S these cars haven't really changed a great deal they're they're overdue for an updateand there's a lot of competition coming Brad this is the year when every major automaker is going to introduce theircompetitor 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 ofcompetition but the point there is consumers will have a choice and in terms of the competition Tesla doesn'thave any lock-in I've often wondered what's the lock-in factor is it the charger network is it the AI Networkthat's you know where all the cars are learning from each other it's apparently uh there's less lock-in for customerswith Automotive so what's really interesting is you know the brands you mentioned as competitorsto Tesla rivian and Lucid not also fromyou know the big uh vehicle producers um the big guys the traditional Companystill really haven't got the design elements because that was a secondaryum consideration you know fuel efficiency and other things where the uh the category you know the way they wouldspecialize and so you know when you've got EVs and you just you know um with plans for higher levels ofautomation you've got to think about the cockpit and the car very differently from a design perspectiveand the manufacturing process right like big automakers are really great at making internal combustion enginesthey'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 electricvehicles that we've seen from the traditional car companies candidly haven't sold as much they're very expensive they don't have their samerange the big big battle coming in 2023 will be the battle between Ford and TeslaTesla cyber truck coming out at seventy thousand dollars and the Ford F-150 theelectric version of the F-150 you know a lot of folks think of Ford as a car company but they stopped makingautomobiles they stopped making sedans uh Ford now makes SUVs and trucks and the Ford F-150 is the most popularvehicle in the United States so there's a lot at stake here for Ford it's really an existential matter for them andthey're coming out of the gate with a uh with a truck that costs about thirty thousand dollars less than the Cybertruck 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 interms of price but the battle will be really between Ford Loyalists and uh people who want that weird looking cybertruck 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 Autoversus new auto um but one thing to bear in mind is the recession uh and these cars areexpensive electric vehicles cost on average about 50 percent more than an internal combustion car that'scomparable so a regular internal combustion car costs about forty five thousand dollars and the averageelectric vehicle cost about 68 000 so it's almost a fifty percent uh differential there and in a recession Ithink 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 combustioncars that they've had so anyway for all these factors I look at this and I say wow Tesla stock is down almost 70percent in the space at just over a year uh the CEOs clearly distracted and he'sno longer considered to be Tony Stark he's now considered to be kind of this Maga boob and so uh we'll see if umwe'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 anywayyou know going back to Ford actually do you know the new uh Ford Mustangs there's the EV it's the electric FordMustang I mean talk about a combustion engine loving uh types I mean geez Imean to see the freaking Mustang turn into an EV what this is mind-blowing yeah I mean actually it's kind of coolthat Ford was able to do that right that's a pretty big pivot for a very traditional auto company and it's not abad 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 thesecars I mean speaking of Tesla anyone who's been through the Tesla uh purchasing process knows that you knowit's it's very unique compared to the old way of buying cars you'd walk in you know someone actually help you no nomore like you wait seven or eight months maybe it comes in on a barge maybe it doesn't and when it arrives you knowum no one really helps you just uh find out where the car is in a parking lot you drive it away it's almost likegetting a zip car you know oh is that how it works you just go find it it's sitting there waiting for youyeah 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 introductionvideo when you start it up you know and we didn't even get the introduction video I don't know what happened to thembut no no no so welcome to the Future yeah I hope you enjoy the heck out of ituh good for you for making this making that switch I'm I'm still sticking with an old gasoline-powered BMW these daysI've been hesitant to get into it we want to do in 2023 we want to take aportion converter to an electric vehicle like an old style Porsche so they're they're coming yeah that's trueconversion kits are cool but but they're coming like the the high-end Auto German automakers are coming out with theirelectric 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 tonof choice and a bunch of turmoil in that space uh we'll see if Tesla can hang onto their position as being the most profitable maker of automobiles in the world Brad if you've got other predictions orforecasts to share with our crowd probably no um yes uh no I think one ofthe other things is the next two years expanding a little bit beyond just the next 12 months next two years we aregoing to see more extreme weather events we were signaling this in the earlier part of the show so let's jump into intothis because um you know the one thing that we had in 2022 is we broke all of the records umhistorically for Eco refugees um and this is primarily because of events like Pakistan and so forth but wealso broke all the records in terms of heat you know and extreme heat levels umand so this unfortunately is going to continue um you know the Eco Refugee situationwith 65 million Eco refugees this year I wouldn't be surprised if those numbersstart to look normal over the next couple of years because of these extreme weather events yeah I think that's rightI would I totally concur um my prediction would be that we are going to see the hottestyears um the hottest weather in history in recorded history in 2023 and 2024um my reason for saying that is that we are in the middle of what's known as an element cycleand uh you know for the last two years it's supposed to be a cold and wet time um ending right now here in Californiawe're having this uh atmospheric River condition you know this torrent of rain that's coming it's much overdue orwelcome it because we've had drought here for the last seven years so we welcome them but that's a side effect ofLa Nina cool and wet cycle and as you just pointed out despite the fact it's been a la nina cyclewe've had the hottest summer in history last summer in in uh in Asia in China inIndia all across Europe all across the United States we broke heat records and that's supposed to be during you knowthat'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 thehot dry cycle uh and that means that although um all these places that are gettinginundated with water now are going to be green and Lush and then they're going to dry out sometime in the summer 2023 sowe're going to see a range of wildfires all across the the west in the United States and other parts of the world thatgot wet weather this year but I think we're going to start to see record uh temperatures in other words we're sayingthat 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 Summersahead absolutely no it'll be hot everyone's summeryeah is it super hot now in Thailand in the summer or is it not changing actually interestingly it's got moremoderate here so it's gone from being more you know it'sum more moderate but in Chiang Mai in Bangkok at least but Chiang Mai apparently gets a lot hotter so it'sgetting into 42 43 degrees Celsius which is uncharacteristically warm soum yeah I don't know why Bangkok is getting slightly cooler but um yeah it'smanageable I mean we've been here during the summer a couple of times and it's manageable it's still in the 80s overhere so it's quite warm and a nice change compared to uh North Carolina at this time it's always it's always hotand humid uh that's true year round even uh in that part of the world one of the things you mentioned Brett is uh peopleare getting displaced uh in um climate refugees I think that's a really big topic uh because certainly here in theUnited States immigration and illegal immigration is a gigantic issue that isconstantly a conflict at the border and many people attribute those uh thoseimmigrants to people who are seeking better Economic Opportunity but one thing we don't seem to take into accountin the United States climate related too yeah that's right they're leaving because there is theclimate is unsustainable where they live it's it's no longer sustainable uh I know a couple people from Honduras andthey 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 becausethe 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 saidthat'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 whythey're leaving so to your point Brett it's going to happen right climate refugees yeah are afact it's going to continue it's not just people who are being displaced by conflicts but we are going to have moralconflicts over water more conflicts over resources growing in a agricultural land and so forth and that's going todisplace a lot more people uh what we don't have and what I can only go after a pessimistic forecast on is uh thepolitical Vision to anticipate that and actually I'm sorry I mean we've got theopposite right we've still got people arguing that you know climate change is not man-made and it's like it doesn'tmatter it doesn't matter whether it's man-made we need a plan to deal with this you know um let's just figure thatout but you know uh you you even have up until fairly recently you know the last president of the United States saying itwas a Chinese hoax I mean this isn't this is incredible that we're so close to these effects on the climate andthese massive changes uh in terms of global immigration Trends and food production and Trends you know foodscarcity and things like that flooding of over 500 cities on on coasts aroundthe 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 Iwonder how long that'll persist how long do you think fake uh this idea that you can just boldface lie your way through apolitical career do you think that'll persist in 2023 right now we're starting to see some pushback here in the UnitedStates Well it can't be right go ahead no there's definitely going to be a bigchange this year I I predict that there's going to be more uh more restlessness let's just say when itcomes to uh both the migration issues climate issues and overall just apolitical environment you know in the U.S heading up to 2024 oh it's going tobe a big year this year just all across the board we're going to see a lot of change but it's necessary change youknow we need action taken absolutely so hopefully uh hopefully it'll be someplans will be put into place to help prevent some total uh dire scenario butyes 2023 will be a big year for sure the one thing I don't think we willquite 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 moresaber rattling around Taiwan so um and there's going to be more challenging of Us's military willagainst uh China just testing the waters there a little bit just to let the usknow that China is getting more and more serious about this every day and so unless there is adiplomatic solution to this and the Diplomatic solution is probably that Taiwan agrees to become part of aneconomic um uh you know alliance with uh China or something like that that that's the onecompromise is possible but I don't think she is necessarily prepared to make that compromise but I don't I don't thinkthere's going to be military conflict over Taiwan but I think there's going to be more pressure put on on the US'swillingness to respond I I agree you see that in the relationship between Russia and Chinaum the Chinese are are supportive of of Russia but they're keeping themselves at arm's length they don't want to getcaught in the crosshairs of the United States they don't want to get dragged into the conflict in any major way uh sothey're trying to maintain a little bit of distance because I think they're taking away the lesson that maybe uh youknow the the Russians should have been paying more attention to which is that the rest of the world can actually tofind the rest let me see when I say the rest of the world what I mean is Western Europe and the United States in Canadaand we need that on energy we need that coming together on energy productionum you know and the standards applied there we need that to come together in terms of corporate missions that thecorporations must serve the greater economy and the needs of the people you know corporations that have beenresponsible for climate change I think again those brands are going to fall out of favor rather quicklyI sure hope that happens you know one of the things to build on a point you guys were making a moment ago uh before thebreak about artificial intelligence is the role of AI in Warfare has beenpredicted in forecasts for years and years and the very first issue of Wired Magazine back in 1991 or two uhforecasted the the future of War cyber War they call it at the time um now we're seeing evidence that dronesmake a material difference a material impact and it's not just predator drones you know navigating above trying to takeout a terrorist leader or something but now swarms of drones coordinated drone attacks we're starting to see evidenceof that in the conflict in the Ukraine and it's pretty clear that every military in the world is paying closeattention to this that's going to cause a substantial change in national security policy and defense strategy butit'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 withsome kind of drone outfit and they're gonna the problem is that a lot of these are going to be autonomous right so youneed to start building ethical guidelines around the use of automatedai-based weapons which we don't have on a global agreement on that as we don't and we know that Chinese are developingthem specifically they're developing drone systems to attack aircraft carriers so it's very veryovertly a threat against the United States and we'll be hearing plenty more about that from the republicans inCongress in this election that's a very easy prediction to make what do you think about the moon what do you thinkabout the race to the moon uh and the idea of uh I would like to see Adam Miss get bootson 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 mean2020 this year yeah you know as that old Habit to Break um but this year um I do think we willsee the the first um second maybe third orbital launch of the Starship as a test program whichgets us to um the Artemis program in 2024 so um youknow we because the SLS could get us uh preliminary um sort of boots on the ground butbigger groups of astronauts and when it really starts to become you know an effort to set up a base on the moon andso forth requires the Starship so next year we'll see some really Foundation flights for Starship and hopefully uh itcan get Elon a bit better focused yeah that's right well when you say next year are you saying 2024 2023 2023 we'll seethe Starship program expand 2024 we'll see boots on the moon and the moon and that will be the Orion program with theSLS initially and there will probably be 2025 2026 where Artemis uses the starship and what's the story with thewith the space station because I hear that it's in kind of like late stage of disrepair uh or it's in need of repairum and and is that something that people plan to do or is the relationship I think the current commission thecurrent operation goes to like 2026 something like that and then it has to be commercially driven so at that pointthey'll ask players like SpaceX and others um you know to to look at takingit over um they will still rent um space on the space station NASA andthe Russians um Russians may also keep ownership of their side so it's not a guarantee thatum the entire space station is going to be turned commercial but at least the U.S side will probably be so touristswill be visiting there um you know it could be used by uh SpaceX as a developmental base formoving the crews to Mars programs and things like that so there's a lot of potential use of the space station Iknow I'm getting totally spaced out on everyone but and Mining operations as well yeah yeah yeahasteroid mining big topic probably not for 2023 but definitely out there andthere's plenty of billionaires that are chasing that dream uh the idea is you know someone's gonna someone's gonnasend a robot spacecraft to an asteroid or asteroid that's made out of platinumor some kind of a very very valuable material and they'll become the first space trillionairelike go look up the movie you didn't see but that's why the Moon is importantbecause they'll bring it back to Luna Robert though the fuel that they'll create for these robotic probesum 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 thesethings great real estate development on the moon next on the futuristsI think that wraps us up for the show anyway it's a good way to finish it soum great uh Katie thanks for coming back on yeah good to see you thank you for having me yeah absolutely well Happy NewYear to both of you and happy New Year to our listeners thank you very kindly folks for listening to the futuristthanks for sharing it with your friends and thanks for all those who've given us some suggestions and feedback andguidance 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 andit's also very helpful folks when you're when you're listening if you give us a five star review on uh apple or Spotifyor wherever you listen to your podcasts uh this helps other people find the show and that's been an immense benefit forus in the first six months of this program we've grown by Leaps and Bounds we're so deeply grateful to everybodyreally it's the best holiday gift you could possibly imagine the support that we've gotten from our fans we reallyreally 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 Kevinand to everybody else who's been helping us with the show we have a fantastic crew provoke media and we are gratefulto you for that support and um we'll look forward to bringing you morestay tuned we'll see you again oh we'll see you all again very soon inthe future future [Music]well that's it for the futurists this week if you like the show we sure hope you did please subscribe and share itwith people in your community and don't forget to leave us a five star review that really helps other people find theshow and you can ping us anytime on Instagram and Twitter at futuristpodcast for thefolks that you'd like to see on the show or the questions that you'd like us to ask thanks for joining 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