[Music] Society will just come apart at the
seams if we can't do that if we can't determine what is real and what is
[Music] it this is the futurist exclusive live
event for the the I was going to say the 12 12th anniversary Rob but the 12 uh 12
Monon anniversary the onee anniversary join me are the hosts of the futurists
Rob Tac Brian Solis Katie King welcome to the futurists all yes welcome to the
Future indeed we said we'd see you in the future and here we are so um I
wanted to just uh let's start off with um uh just um giving a bit of highlights
let me ask you guys first um who who's your favorite guest that we've had on
the show uh this year oh my gosh that's a tough question like how many guests
have we had Brett well one guest per week we had so it must be at least 50
guests right fair enough okay that's good man we've had so many talented people with so many different vared
backgrounds I'm thinking that I like Tanya Hardy I thought she was great the NASA Mission controller who did the
flight to Mars I thought that was a really fun episode um I also got a real kick out of
talking to Julian bleer um because he has such a fun practice his design practice is so super interesting but
gosh I mean that can go on all day well you know some of the highlights for me um you know like some of the big big
guests um obviously you know the Sci-Fi guys so Kevin J Anderson David Bren are
always fun um we just recorded another show with David Bren and another show
with Kevin jerson and they're both uh just incredible
thinkers the trip man yeah you know on that on that that uh recording that we
did For an upcoming episode with Kevin jerson was actually my favorite that was
in fact I it was it was so much my favorite that it was happening in real time where I was just lulled into
silence I could just listen to him talk all day and he's just incredibly electric he just exudes this positive
energy of which you we need more of that in our lives yeah he's a he's a great
example of like um you know you look at him he's um had something like 60 New
York Times bestsellers which is incredible like you know um like you
know you look at someone like Gary vanchu right he's got five or six New York Times bestsellers and you think he's incredibly successful Kevin janison
turns out a new New York Times bestseller every year right you know um he was saying on his on the interview in
the '90s he was producing 12 books a year
as an author I can't even like comprehend that right think about if I
did 12 articles in a year that would be an achievement let alone books yeah but
not only that but you know how like in the first episode this is one of the things we we learned um you know is that
how he does his books is he goes on a hike and he has a Dictaphone and he
records the the the book into the dictaphone and then his assistant you know transcribes it later right um which
again I can't even imagine doing that to you know especially when he's got all these plot lines and so forth that
particularly for like writing in the June Universe keeping all these plot lines in his head so that he can do that
it's just extraordinary let's turn it back to the futurist for the folks who are just joining the room you are watching the first anniversary live
stream of the futurist show I'm Rob Turk my co-host Brett King and our guest
hosts Brian sis and Katie King aka Miss metaverse hey hey Miss metaverse how's
that tagline working out for you these days metaverse is not quite as cool a little the shine has come off the metaverse listen I I was using the
metaverse decades ago before anyone knew what the metaverse even was first of all
I think the metaverse needs to be reclaimed because the metaverse originally meant multiple realities you
know I mean cr right into that yeah Apple's about to drop this mixed reality
headset they've been tantalizing us with it for years now it's finally coming so who knows don't rule out the metaverse
it's just around the corner as been talking about metaverse 2.0 you know
it's going to be a 2.0 a 3.0 so keep evolving for sure right on and also
Let's uh let's keep in mind that neurolink just got approval for human trials so we're uh we'll see some kind
of other metaverse as well some something that we might plug into I think they called it the Matrix back in
the day yeah that's right that's right well that's been one of the themes as Brett
was just saying a minute ago um one of the themes of this show is that science fiction is what inspires every single
person we talk to uh we always do this little Q&A with our guests and they um we always ask them what story or what
science fiction inspired you and everyone's got a story like they don't hesitate they all know their first science fiction movie or their science
fiction show or film that they that they were inspired by uh and it's uh it's really tightly woven into even like you
know hardcore scientists and researchers uh they've all been inspired by some narrative so for part of our show we
always interview science fiction authors Brett and I enjoy that the other half we've also been talking to people who
aren't just thinking about the future but people are making the future and this is my favorite thing I love those people uh you know our our definition
for this Show's purposes our definition of the term futurist is uh not just
somebody that writes about the future but somebody that's actually actively working towards building their version
of the future and that's a key message for the people are watching it's like look the future is something that you
can own it's something that you can manage you can manipulate you can drive towards you can shape it it's up to you
of course if you don't do any of those things you're gonna be living in a future that somebody else invested some else defines yeah yeah and you know one
of the great um illustrations that we had um of futurist thinking on the show
was uh the episode with Thomas fry yeah that guy's great yeah because he he said
you know he and I was just listening to the clip I was trying to upload the clip for the stream today but um he
demonstrated futurist thinking in real time yeah so how he did that he he used
two examples one was a space hotel and the other was a robot dog right and in
both instances he sort of played out how you know you can think like a future so
okay you you know someone announces are going to have a space Hotel so then you have a he told it a series of Firsts
that you have associated with that who's going to be the first guest of the space Hotel who's going to cook the first meal
for the space Hotel who are going to be the first entertainers that are on the space you know like he started to
extrapolate this and with the you know and with the robot dog he was like all right so what does a dog do well you
could say it protects you it provides companionship so how is a robot dog going to protect you well it has to be
at a sense danger so how do we code that in you know so that sort of um
demonstration of futurist thinking was a sort of a unique highlight I think from
um this season as well it was a real Flex he's awesome that guy's a pro he's been doing this a while and it shows one
of the things we noticed is that every person we interview has a methodology for thinking about the future and that's
part of what we're trying to impart to the audience is the idea that you know thinking about the future isn't just um
an idol fantasy it's a habit it's an it's a it's a skill you can build uh what's interesting is nobody has the
same methodology so for every person we've interviewed they have their own unique methodology that they've arrived at some are much more um much more
fluent in it and aware of it and others it's kind of an unconscious thing um
what Brett just described as Thomas Frey that's a great episode to listen to if you want to see futurist thinking
demonstrated live but we've had a number of um folks that we would consider professional futurist demonstrate how
they how they do it how they go about doing it I mentioned Julian blee a moment ago um and he's person who
created the manual of design fiction and his style is to actually make like a brochure in fact he's made like fake
Ikea brochures for items from the future me he goes all the way towards building them so he like realizes the future in a
physical way super fun episode fun to talk to him about that um David Matten
who writes the uh the new world same humans newsletter he's a very thoughtful fellow
from the UK and he shared his methodology with uh which was uh you know he he covers
Tech Trends and sociological Trends and where they intersect and he said look technology changes constantly and not
all Trends L some Trends come and go but he said there's one constant the one constant is human needs and so if you
take a new technology Trend or some new capability and you ask yourself how does this satisfy a human need does it do it
better job don't what we currently have and you said if that's the case then you can predict pretty reasonably that's going to be very successful at thought
that was kind of a cool approach uh and another person who uses that humanistic approach is Rohit tar in fact he spent
quite a bit of time talking about um how to think and how to communicate with people uh about their concerns about the
future and we joke around a lot about you know things like the AI apocalypse on the show uh you know that's always
kind of a lively source of gags for us but the truth is a lot of people don't find the future a fun thing to think
about because it's scary to them yeah and in rohit's practice he has to work with corporations where they're very resistant to change and he has a very
human centered Focus uh in fact I think that's what we called that that show the human- centered future and uh he talks
about nonviolent communication which is a practice that you can do he he applies that in corporate Communications and
what is in offices that was that was also a theme of John hegel's interview was it was talking about how to deal
with the fear of the future he's a friend of David brins he's uh he's the fellow who introduced uh the concept of
digital transformation you know that term got to take it for granted now but he actually coined the term back in the 90s and in the 90s was an absolute
Powerhouse uh his books like net gain uh were really influential and he's pivoted
his entire Consulting practice now to one thing which is helping companies deal with fear emotional resistance to
change he's decided that's the most high value thing he can do so that was a fun episode with John Hegel it is a little
weird that like half the people we interview know each other uh it makes me feel like we're creating a club you know maybe that's why it's called the
futurist Network you know we're creating a network of people it feels like that doesn't it it is a network I mean that's
how Brett and I met we were all part of one big Community really I mean I was on Brett show back in what was it 2015 you
know uh back on breaking Banks and I mean yeah and and another thing too I
mean there's so many wonderful people in the Futures community that I've met that have been on the show I mean uh Harry CL
you know good friend of all of ours and you know he's doing some awesome work on robot avatars which was a show the robot
Avatar show uh there's also ger lard he's been super inspirational yeah great
and Ross Dawson too Ross Dawson you know I remember his futurist list I mean uh
what what a great list just well let's we went to that list to look at who we should invite on the show actually so
shout out to Ross out to Ross for sure yeah um the other one I liked um was
Aubrey degy I thought it was a big get to get Aubrey you know um futurist
specializing in in life extension and Longevity but um one of the really cool
things that I learned from au's uh episode was um you know I I've always
maintained you know when I've written about longevity that um you know it's most likely going to end up as a treatment for the rich and he disabused
us of that concept because he said you know the most expensive part of the Health Care System um you know in
countries like the United States today is caring for the elderly so if you could give them longevity treatments to
improve their um you know long-term quality of Health then you reduce the overall health care cost to the system
which it's the first time I thought about it like that so you know there were some really amazing gems like that
in in the uh in in the in you know like over and over you know speaking to these
these people with with Incredible you just nuggets yeah Aubrey's an interesting fell I've been interested in
his work for more than 10 years I would guess about 15 years now and I've met him a couple of times uh but what's fun
about doing a show like this is you get a chance to get to know people on a personal level he's such an approachable and friendly person uh he loves doing
Outreach because what he's talking about frankly most people are pretty resistant to the notion that you can extend human
longevity or solve the problem of Aging uh and so he has to be out there in very person Al way to persuade people to open
up about that we've had quite a few folks talk about health andity on the show in addition to Aubrey deg gray um
we had Dr Daniel craft this is the episode I got the most positive feedback from listeners on um if folks aren't
familiar with Daniel craft uh he runs the Medtech conference in San Diego and he's part of Singularity University he's
a a cancer researcher and um an absolute efficient AO for future tech gear so if
you ever want to know about wearables or Quantified itself he is your go-to expert on the subject and he gave us a
whirlwind tour of all the advances that are happening right now uh on medical Frontiers we also talked to Tony Hunter
uh who is a food futurist which I didn't even know I thought that was pretty cool actually that's cool and uh very
Charming very Charming fellow uh but he pointed out that food security is like a number one strategic uh Initiative for
most countries right to make sure that their uh their food is uh you know their access to food is something they can
rely on and uh you know of course in the background um we've got this war going on in the Ukraine and that shut down a
lot of the shipping out of the Black Sea and a lot of the world's grain goes that way and so uh there was some real
serious context to Tony Hunters otherwise very Lively and fun conversation um and then we had a more
serious conversation with Roger holtzberg who I know as a World Builder and a former Disney imagineer um but he had a brush with
cancer himself and now has pivoted his entire practice towards technology that heals so it's kind of a fun spectrum
that you see one of the things we're noticing on the show is that the people who think about the future when they see an opportunity they're not afraid to
reinvent themselves and go for it we've already talked about a couple of those today um but that seems to be a constant
theme if you're interested in the future you're probably pretty interested in going for it uh you know one thing I
noticed even Brett you've kind of turned me on to is um well everybody has a different
methodology every futurist has an attitude as well and they they may have different methodologies but they share
the same attitude uh I remember when I first started talking to Brett about doing the show um he said I can't wait
to live in that future and I was like so Charmed by that idea but it turns out every person we've interviewed on the
show they share that that kind of Sunny philosophy like we haven't talked to anybody who is an apocalyptic thinker or
a doom and gloom person I mean even David Brin who can go pretty far in
either Direction in any direction candidly veral U but even he I remember famously at the end of the first show he
was really excited because he said we do have a chance we have a chance for survival it's got like his closing line
on the show yeah no I I think most of the guests we've had are fairly optimistic wouldn't you say yeah I think
so I think that's a real theme I think if you think about the future you're an optimist absolutely well it's kind of
hard it's kind of hard to be in any conversation whether it's thinking about the future or it's thinking about
Innovation or it's thinking about creating net new value it's hard not to be an optimist and be successful on
those fronts and everyone you know to quote Steve Jobs everyone's just looking
to make their dent in the universe and it's usually driven by solving a problem
or creating an opportunity uh and going back Rob to your point earlier about
needs you know there are known needs and there are unknown needs and I think that
the magic there uh of chasing the what you know what you know you
don't know and what you don't know you don't know uh is magical you're making my head
explode Rumsfeld quote that's the that's the discipline right we did also have a
futurist from woking come on the show to talk about the future of payments and he's in to uh
to say hello so Dave bir Let's uh let's let's welcome from working as one of the
guests on the show hi guys
hey what's life like in working are you in the future yet today
it's particularly Sunny so it's very good but um yeah I tuned in because that
point you're making about uh optimism where that really applies at the moment
I'm I'm just curious what you guys think about this is around AI
because it's quite exciting we're at some kind of cost
putting AI in the hands of you know millions of people rather than just a few corporations you know clearly is
going to have some knock on effects and uh and and I can certainly think of you
know a soon Army of misinformation as being one of the impacts but it's like
it's very dystopian like all all the commentary we see about this you know rapid increase in AI it's become very
dystopic and so kind of what I want to ask you the Press yeah but that's the Press Dave and we get that stuff in the
Press but the press these days is all about sensationalism and hitting the you know hitting the disgust button or the
anger button they push these red emotions because that's what gets people to click on our show what what Brett was
just saying is that consistently what we're getting is people who are very sunny and optimistic and we're not talking of random strangers we've
interviewed some of the top AI researchers um and that includes people like um Roman
yampolsky who's an AI safety researcher very pragmatic great interview if if you want to hear about someone who's dealing
with the real issues the safety issues uh and he's not alarmist in any way Ben geril spoke about it Dr Philip Alva
talked about a world where we're constantly monitored which sounds creepy orwellian and I pressed him on the subject uh but he actually responded in
a very positive and sunny op optimistic way so I think the the trend that we're seeing is that people that are working
on these issues uh literally building the AIS uh they're not as concerned uh
they're pretty pragmatic about it so I think I would say there don't don't believe the hype we're trying to pop the
hype bubble yeah actually David Brin made an interesting point when we had him on the first um you know one one of
the early episodes um talking about St opian versus utopian um uh science
fiction movies and he made the point that it's cheaper to produce dystopian Sci-Fi movies and it is you know utopian
sci-fi mic movies so that's why we get so many dystopian future because you can get burned out buildings is a lot easier
to find than you know futuristic interfaces with tons of CGI right a
happy world full of abundance is of a pretty boring World candidly for a movie the movies need conflict in order to
make the movie go so yeah that's a good point but you know we in the in the quickfire lightning rounds we always ask
that question what sort of future do you hope for um or what science fiction is
representative the future you hope for and so many you know um talked about the Star Trek future as being what they H
for which is a testimony to to uh Jean Roddenberry for sure but yeah a future
with no government and no no apparent government and no apparent politics that's what they're talking no money right or as we talked about the other
day on the David Brin show can Stanley Robinson and Ministry of the future absolutely yeah yeah and
apparently they're gonna name David shared that they're thinking about naming a department uh the ministry of the future that'd be pretty cool what an
honor for sci-fi writer we have a question from Mark Sylvester uh hi Mark good hey Mark you here uh his question
is in three to five planning Cycles what are things that leaders should be considering that are not obvious so the
non obvious to five year planning Cycles mhm well you know the the the most
immediate thing I can think of in terms of AI is we are very soon going to see
start to see the world divided into two groups of people those who are empowered
by AI or corporations powered by by by Ai and those who are arguing why the
traditional way of business is better right you know which is the story of everything you know the internet
disruption and so forth um so if you're in a planning cycle next three to five years you have to think about how to
augment yourself and your business with AI I'd say I'd say that but um maybe Katie
Brian what are your thoughts one of the things that bothers me about AI right now is that we don't we don't think like
futurists or scenario planners are optimists we we do inherently bring in that dystopian response which is in
times of uncertainty cut and that is essentially what we started to see with
IBM uh and their announcement uh British Telecom recently uh and essentially
AI being used to replace people uh is sort of that natural tendency of where
Executives want to go or leaders want to go whereas if you reframe the question as to how could these roles be augmented
with AI to net gain or net produce uh growth in 5 seven 10 10x in today's
output what yields would that give to the business and would it actually drive greater profitability and net new
Revenue uh versus reduced costs uh and streamlined
and let me build on that Brian because that's a really good point which is uh you know companies are not just cutting
costs they're cutting people right we're seeing hundreds of thousand people laid off in the tech sector and now the media business is laying people off and it's
kind of Rippling through the economy maybe that's something companies need to do right now maybe they over hired before the pandemic but um one thing
they're not investing in heavily is employee education Workforce training and my sense is uh if if I were running
a business right now I would be asking myself how can AI augment every person on my team you know not just a handful
of people but rather you know really I think the benefit of something like chat GPT a generative text thing is that it
brings mediocre writers up a notch it's not so much a good writers need to use it um but for a lot of people aren't
good writers you know half of them are below average of course and and it can be really powerful to help people communicate better uh it can manage you
know there's a lot of places it can streamline process um it doesn't necessarily need to lead to Cuts but I
think companies right now are not thinking so much about how to enhance employees they're trying to think about how to replace employees that might not
be the right thought process you're you're exactly right this is this is exactly the time for
optimistic futurism because essentially what we're being challenged with as a
human race is how do we live with our artificial intelligence and it's a
choice uh we either let it happen to us uh right and that's leaving it to
leaders decision makers to think the way that they always have uh and up take new
technology to automate scale make things more efficient uh Andor it's an opportunity to reimagine what the future
looks like what the role of business in society looks like uh and then the role AI can play in augmenting our capacity
we get to invent that we get to create that so we're all pretty optimistic why are people so pessimistic
like the story is always a well but but but here's the thing that we've often
agreed on disagreed on on the show Rob which is the impact of AI in respect to techno unemployment right you know well
we've had debates on on on the show in this respect you know I've always maintained that this is going to be a
game Cher that certainly in the mid 2030s we're going to see large scale technology unemployment and for exactly
this reason is that as AI you know we start to trust AI and use it in place of
humans in so many areas you either have to retrain people on mass and then
you've got the Andrew Yang question about the five million truck drivers in the United States how many of them
really want to be coders you know and and so this is um I they don't have to
be coders right the way you're framing the question answers itself right I mean not the quival but uh you know look
here's the here's what I'm seeing happening um as companies shed employees the in the past you would get
hired by another company right if you got great Tech skills you're getting fired by a tech company you're probably getting hired by another company but
when at a time when they're all laying people off what we're starting to see is a proliferation of startup businesses I
spoke to a fellow the other day that runs an incubator uh or an accelerator I should say and um he's trying to automate the process of capital
allocation because he said there's going to be such a flood such an abundance of AI funded startup companies that only
have a handful of people but they'll be able to do a great deal so he's trying to speed up the process of capital
allocation to me that's very forward thinking right to to Mark Sylvester's question about what should we be looking at in the future uh the problem that
fell is trying to solve is if there's an abundance of new companies then how can I match them with investors much faster
with much less friction where these startups don't have to fly across the country to talk to investors and so forth he's going to eliminate that
friction and thereby speed up or accelerate the process that seems a pretty future focused
idea we we do have a question from Johan Dedrick he said what are thoughts on
open-source personal private AI protecting individuals from exploitative
AI from corporations I like that he also added
the optimistic line because he certainly can read to the contrary so so I would
say Johan's right on the money in the sense that the uh where the momentum is shifted in the last two months is towards open source Ai and that has a
lot to do with the fact that uh meta's llama um llm slipped into the public
domain inadvertently you know so it's now become open source I don't think they intended it to be that way U but as
a result there's been a proliferation of now independent teams including individuals uh running that large
language model and innovating with it and what we're starting to see now is literally hundreds of new product
launches every week for a while I was trying to keep up with it um and I found it's just a treadmill it's a it's a mugs
game to try to keep up with all the new Innovations in AI because there could be hundred new products released in a
single day like you simply can't evaluate every single one of them and now this whole newsletters devoted to it
uh so on the one hand um uh open open source is accelerating Innovation but I
think also it's uh developing tools for individuals so that we'll be able to select our own tool set and I actually
think this is going to be a responsibility everybody has start to valuate your own workflow and then identify the right tools to help you
automate where you need it well you know when we look at AI in particular the EU is sort of starting to lead regulation
in this respect um well EU and China um but there is a debate around
privacy and whether privacy is eliminated with artificial intelligence
in fact that was always Jack marah's position right is that privacy wouldn't
exist in the future in the same way we have it today but maybe we'll ask Dave to join us back here for a second um
Dave you know how does how does AI affect uh privacy considerations I mean I think that point
is is actually a very strong one and I you know you were talking earlier on about literature and how you know
somehow that gives us a better framework for thinking about the F and I think one of the one of the interesting things about the kind of you know Neil
Stevenson William Gibson view of things is that it may well be that we don't
have any privacy in the real world anymore um and that actually accelerates
our push to live work and play kind of in the metaverse because in the metaverse that will be the place where
you actually have privacy because of you know because of cryptography and zero knowledge proofs and homomorphic
encryption all these kind of things walking down the street you have no privacy there's cameras everywhere and
everyone's got a phone uh every single person with a phone is recording you and putting it on Facebook and all this kind
of thing so so the metaverse in many ways will become a more attractive place
um to actually interact with people and that may accelerate the push so you know
people think of the metaverse very much in terms of the interface they think of you know fortnite or or Call of Duty or
something they and they think but it's also how your digital twin will be yeah right the point is it's not it's you
know the metaverse isn't just about like the how it looks and the VR and the r
it's also like the infrastructure of it and that I I think there are some there
are some reasons for thinking that there are aspects of the infrastructure of the metaverse will actually be more
appealing to people not just simple things like money and stuff like that but if I could build on that it's not just the metaverse we're actually
talking about the next iteration of the web itself is far more attractive in that regard because of the of what we're
seeing with web three Technologies where we're actually going to give the user
more control we're going to give the user control of their data that data becomes part of their wallet which becomes part of their identity of which
they take with them it's in fact most organizations whether that's a business or whether that's an etailer whether
anybody who transacts they're not they're not ready for this world in fact it's going to completely disrupt their
their mechanisms for Revenue employee relations we have to now start thinking about this world of where people like
you and me are are in control of those experiences and that'll happen well before the metaverse we're used we're
used to uh we're used to uh the internet be because I mean and lots of people say
the same thing you know the internet in retrospect it was a bad idea to build it without an identity layer it was a bad
idea to build it without a payments layer we you know the metaverse won't be like that but you know the implications
of that I think you you were saying what are the non-obvious implications like right now you know I go to my Facebook
feed I go to to Instagram or whatever you know I see a picture of I see a
picture of you know Winston Churchill playing table tennis with with Henry VII and it looks completely realistic and I
have no idea whether it's real or not because I'm a [ __ ] I don't understand any history like you can show people
anything and they'll think you show people what they want to believe right so this is what's
happening at least here in the United States is our news media is turning into something that's like the confirmation
bias Channel where they show you the news stories that you want to see and deep fakes are great at that right so
deep fak build an alternate version of the world that we can uh we can buy into if it flatters our uh our prejudices or
flatters our bias but but that's we've got to start tagging content with AI
generated you know we we've got there there is society will just come apart at
the seams if we can't do that if we can't determine what is real and what is in provoke media is proud to sponsor
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sh I want to talk about the topics that we didn't cover in the show so when we talk to um when we talk to our guest
experts like Dave very frequently the same topics keep coming up lately it's all AI unfortunately you know the world
is drunk on AI right now so it's the only Topic at the at the bar but there's there's a couple topics that keep coming
up again and again and again technological unemployment I see Steve Troyer post did a question about that you know the this question of whether or
not uh new more jobs are created versus jobs that are lost historically always more jobs have been created I seen a
reason for that to change well but we we've debated that we've debated that we've never had a technology that can
impact every industry and every type of human process-based job simultaneously
all at once so this is unprecedented so yeah but you're you know as I mentioned a minute ago it it seems to me you're
not another job when when you get laid off by your big corporation uh you're G to start a company well Ubi is you know
Ubi is the way to create tons of entrepreneurs right Ubi is a way to punt the problem created by the private
sector over to government and everybody complains about government and by the way they're doing the same thing with with the climate change right now
private sector creates the problem punt the problem over to the government now the government and then they don't let government fix it because they control
lobbying groups and therefore control policy this is one topic we're never going to agree on I am I am so sorry
we're not going to go back down the r hole although I promise you we'll do a show one day we'll do a death match on
the you well you know I'm happy to entertain your delusion can I just challenge the
um that that this thing about the jobs thing I i' I've got the numbers in front of me I don't want to bore people with
the numbers just I just want to make a couple of General points because I just want to challenge that narrative a little bit so first of all I've got some
figures in front of me for the investment in industrial robots in the UK France and
Germany and uh forget the exact numbers for sake of argument in the UK you know
there's five robots per 10,000 people who work in car manufacturing and in
Germany it's 2,000 Germany has way way more robots in car manufacturing than we
do and the consequence has been that the number of people employed in the German car industry has gone up significantly
because of this investment because the robots make the industry more productive German car are more attractive people
buy more of them if your cars are attractive and people are buying them then you need more people to service
them and you need uh more people to work in advertising and marketing so there's very interesting if you look at the
actual numbers they've gone up but my favorite number and I'd love your comment on this my favorite number is
that in the UK where productivity is appalling compared to France and Germany and
places like this in developed countries a useful benchmark for for for
for this Pathway to the future is car washes car washes are a a very very good
example so in an advanced country like Germany the number of automated car
washes has gone up you know people you know round at the gas station you drive
your car into the car wash get it washed dude where you going man in the 're we're live Dave in the UK it's
hard so the UK has actually been replacing robots with people well so this is this is
interesting theice human labor is cheaper than a robot right particularly like a robot not automation or
software I mean we are gonna have to deal with that at some everything I'm just saying if if you look at the
numbers it's not true like in some places increasing robots increases employment sure in other places we've
been chucking out robots and replacing them with people all right we I post the thing the other day I got a bunch of
static from people about on social media which was a picture that said uh it was a meme that said wait a minute I thought
the robots were going to be doing all the grunt work how is it that the AI are now generating poetry and and painting
pictures like we're still doing the grunt work and it's true if you think about you know a carpenter a plumber uh
someone who works in construction uh those jobs aren't going to get replaced by robots anytime soon uh the jobs that
are going to get replaced now are going to be bookkeeping jobs uh copywriters uh social media marketers marketers um even
some level web development these jobs I think have a very short shelf life ahead of them um but presumably some of those
folks are going to Pivot start to use Ai and they'll be super productive and thereby they'll be able to continue to do those jobs if they want to Let's if
we can please let's steer it away from Ai and Robotics only because that topic just keeps coming up like a bad Penny
every time we talk about it one of the things that doesn't seem to come up on the show which I find fascinating is
demographics because demographics is one of the few ways we can be certain about the future and that's because the births
are already here so we know what's going to happen for instance we know that the region of subsaharan Africa is going to
add people faster than any other region on the planet and yet very few of the people who we've interviewed have much
to say about Africa as it which leads us to the conclusion that India and Nigeria
are going to be you know two of the top three um countries in the world in the 2050s because of the demographic changes
yeah I think that there's a great deal of likelihood that those places are going to emerge as centers of innovation because they have to right because
they're going to they need to create jobs more than any other place in the world meanwhile here in the United States we're following a trend that the
rest of the northern hemisphere seems to be following which is that we're not reproducing uh so you know the United
States uh if we did not have immigration and we're certainly making it difficult to have immigration here now if we did
not have immigration the US population would not be would not be growing and of course if it doesn't grow there goes Social Security there goes the whole
retirement scheme so it's actually important for everybody to grow the population Europe in general is aging
out Russia aging out China has passed Peak population aging out the whole yeah Japan famously right and South Korea has
the lowest reproduction rate of any country on the planet right now uh so all the growth in the future in
population is going to come from the from the southern hemisphere the other Trend the other demographic trend we
never cover on the show which I would love to get into is the depopulation of rural environments this is happening
across the US and Asia and Europe as people move to cities as we urbanize um
you know kind the flip side of that is that PE less fewer people and fewer young people and few are working people
are in the countryside that's one reason why those places are so deeply conservative uh so I was just reading
yesterday from someone who said that there is a um you can correlate uh the deepening conservativism and aging out
uh and hollowing out of the of the countryside right and relate that to the fact that those people don't come to the
city much and they don't see the incredible diversity and the incredible transformation that's happening or the challenges of managing these complex
Urban environments I I think Japan illustrates your points extremely well actually it's
a it's a very well made point because in Japan you do have that depopulation yeah um and you also have a
massive investment in robotics rather than immigration so they they they deal with their how many how many robots do
you think are on the planet right now guys I don't know a couple of million I supp the numbers are 60 million 60
million 60 million but but yeah 60 million robots now this includes industrial robots but you know it now
includes drones autonomous drones it now in would it will include autonomous vehicles in the future so the estimates
are that sometime in the 2040s the number of robots will exceed the number of humans on the planet so be kind of
robots right they're listening too but but the point about
the Japanese use of it which I think is very inventive in ways is you know we we think about the robot as the thing
that's making the car or writing our advertising text for us but for example one of the things that fascinates me in
Japan is the use of robots to support disabled people yeah so you have people yeah that's an important um part of if
you look at age care Japan doesn't have the capability to provide there's not
enough nurses they don't have the immigration policy well they're making artificial wounds did you see
talking about using that in Japan hang on the reason Japan doesn't
have enough people to do health care and to care for elderly people is because of immigration let's be clear there's an
artificial constraint on the number there's no no I've just said that yeah I agree absolutely immigration robots and
China's going to have the same problem right China's not going to allow massive immigration from the Philippines to
bring in nurses for example um and you know um and the US has a shortage of of
nursing stuff so we need robot robotics to care for the Aged that would be the conclusion yeah
my sense is in healthcare and Elder Care in particular a lot of people get displaced if they get displaced by AI
those are going to be jobs for humans uh and there'll be an abundance of people available to do that kind of work okay
so here's another thing that came up which Brett and I have talked about a couple times we've interviewed a couple futurists on the show who refuse to put
dates on their forecasts yeah I don't get that this puzzled me and I'm gonna start calling people out on it when we
do the show in the future because what good is a forecast if you don't put a date on it it's like saying oh yeah someday we're going to have vacation on
Mars well that doesn't help me plan my vacation this year or next year so like what good is that a prediction without a
date I'm gonna have my first vacation on Mars in 2048 okay there you go there you go and
it's gonna be a twoe two-year vacation because that's how the uh transition works I'm hoping Katie comes
but think it's cowardly not to put a date on a forecast it's not just a useless
forecast because no one can it's not actionable by anyone if you don't have a date on it I actually think it's uh the
futurist is dodging a professional responsibility if they don't put a date on it for I agree I agree you know
because it's what is what is futurism if not you know we've we've talked about this on the show futurism
is super forecasting right um you know the further so you know
you was with Joseph who's a super forecaster yeah right so you can talk about forecasts
you know 3 to five years but you're getting out to 20 30 years you're talking about super forecasting right you know that's that's the analogy and
and so you have to be talking time frames to be putting making it relevant
in terms of where this fits into society and what the challenges will be with this I think you must have um you know
you can have a range you can have a range of possibilities or a range of dates you know but um we we have a k
here from Jonathan Alfred he says I predict futurist will start putting in
2027 very well done thank you what's actually what's the most interesting forecast we've had on the show thinking
out loud that's let me think I have to go back through you know the one thing that
I that was interesting to me was one of the early guests you bought on Rob which was Andrew Hessel oh yeah he's awesome
this thing around synthetic biology came up actually a few times and he was qued
a few times by other futurists including by the uh the food futurist I forgot his
name now but um Tony Tony yeah you know synthetic biology is one of those
futuristic things that where the Sun never fully Rises we've been hearing about synthetic biology for 15 years um
by All rights it ought to be a gigantic business and for those who aren't familiar with it the idea of synthetic biology is it's a Step Beyond biotech or
a Step Beyond um um bioengineering where we actually are reprogramming the cell you're using the cell's um internal
chemistry to program it like a computer uh to produce different things and if you think about the phenomenal
generative energy of biology on this planet you know all life in some form and all energy in some form is coming
from the Sun uh and we're converting that energy into into various life forms there's a whole long chain you basically
extending that energy as it circulates around the planet uh that's a very powerful generative force and it should be able uh to help us generate new forms
of energy energy or new forms of power new forms of food new forms of medicine even materials uh they're talking about
programming cells to grow a house like a tree uh now that's a vision we're pretty
far from that Vision we have seen one spectacular application of synthetic biology which was uh the co 19 vaccines
uh so the the uh those vaccines would not be possible if if it weren't for 10 years of investment in synthetic biology
U but that topic keeps coming up it's one of those future focused topics that I'm interested in it's a bit like the metaverse it's like the thing we keep
talking about we expect it to happen someday so my Takeaway on that is that sometimes the future takes a long time
to arrive so that's one of the reasons why people are hesitant to put a date on their forecasts um and but the future's
already here it's just not evenly distributed that's true it's not fully formed yeah but that's a good point
right there was a time where like if you wanted to see the future of Mobile you just had to jump on a plane and go to Tokyo and you could get a great snapshot
of what was coming around the world in a year or two you know can I add something real quick one of the things that you
had brought up actually in a conversation we had was the the the interesting factors
of when you bring futurists together and you cross the streams like in Ghostbusters and for example uh when you
and Brett were talking earlier about India and Nigeria I was thinking about
uh other climate futurists who say by the time that happens those two areas will also be uninhabitable uh because of
climate transformation and so then when we start to look at the world through
these different lenses to bring them together it also allows for different conversations to have about what what do
we do in these scenarios yeah there's going to be mass migrations of people we're already
seeing that now I mean it's already in progress there's you know climate refugees what was what was the number
something like 20 million no so so la last year was 65 million and most of
that was because of Pakistan right um so um yeah we we're gonna have the uh we're
gonna have the chief um the head of communications veneo incident Brian
coming on the show in the future but um have you guys so I this Katie and I ask
everyone this question these days but have you watched extrapolations yet the Apple TV
series I if you want to see how you know
a fairly realistic version of how climate change the use of AI the role of
corporations in setting policy Eco refugees air quality water quality food
quality you know all of those things potentially play out with the mix of climate change and AI it's a really
really interesting thought exercise and and does align quite closely with where
both Katie and I think the world might end up potentially and it's a warning for us because um you know we're just
not doing enough to prepare for the future and that's again something that I think Rob that you know we've seen come
up time and time again in conversations we've had with people is that um you
know there's not a lot of um you know we argue about what's going to happen in
the future we debate if AI is going to take jobs we don't prepare for the fact
that AI is going to change the way we work right we we know that food scarcity is going to be a problem we're not
preparing for you know solving that right it's a topic that comes up a lot uh you know for instance when we spoke
to uh Stefan limm from um from finland's Ministry of the future effectively uh
he's their minister of Technology um you know he pointed out to us that the
difficulty the EU has in trying to regulate things like artificial intelligence even trying to Define it
like trying to Define it so there's a defect in Democratic Society if you're running an autocracy it's pretty easy
you can just decree a dictat and then everybody has to conform and we see that happening in China and elsewhere uh but
in in Western democracies um the defect is that they have to wait for the problem to arrive they're incapable of
preemptively dealing with a problem even if we're pretty sure it's going to occur there are just too many uh there are too
many ways to stop the process there's too many checks in the system and it's just too easy to to stop someone uh and
so here here's the way I would put that the future doesn't have a lobbyist right existing industry has a
lobbyist existing groups have lobbyists uh interests are very powerful in government but unfortunately nobody's
representing the future in Congress yeah Congress barely knows
what's going on period I mean they don't even understand Facebook I mean it's just like but this this this raises a
really good point is how are we gonna deal with getting you know um really
future prooof regulation in place like I know for example looking at the banking sector the regulatory infrastructure we
have is is already not fit for purpose for the way um you know and this is why
we're starting to see bank failures in the United States um we need to completely restructure that but to try
and get state and federal Regulators to you know allow someone else to take over
their perceived responsibilities is just like it takes acts of Congress and so
forth It's so difficult to even conceptualize but um you know you you I mean regulation
around AI is a great example is you know you know we don't have people in charge
that have the skills to sort of think about this I mean that's partly because the republicans in Congress have killed
the the technology office they used to have an excellent group that advised them uh that was a political decision
because they don't want to hear about they want to know about it got a a question from Jimmy gilber Hi Jimmy uh
good to see you here and the question is topics on energy to support all the Ovation so energy does come up from time
to time certainly when we talk about autonomous vehicles and electric vehicles which is a topic that we've covered a couple of times uh Brad
Templeton for instance and we had ramz Nam who is an expert on Energy Future
Energy and by the way it's a great episode if you haven't is great yeah RZ is cool he's like the cool futurist and
now he's a venture capitalist so now he's actually putting money where his mouth is which you know that is you can't get more futuristic than that and
um he's very calm about our Energy Future he's extraordin nearly optimistic I would say I'm I'm more anxious about
the energy in the future than he is yeah he was quite um quite optimistic yeah it
was a good show um you know the the topic that just came up the other day in in a recent recording was uh about
recharging Long Haul trucks you know like the big uh 18wheeler trucks a great candidate for an electric vehicle it
makes sense to Electrify them diesel is nasty uh but if you had 10 of those trucks trying to recharge their
batteries it would pull down as much power as a small village or or town and we just simply don't have the generative capacity right now to support that we
don't have the generation where the trucks are so that was going to require a rethinking of our energy grids um and
that'll probably be a big project it's a little weird to me that we just passed this multi-billion dollar or trillion
dollar uh infrastructure bill in the United States and it didn't have anything in it about smart Grid or
future grid what a mess no smart contracts yeah yeah yeah it's sad
I mean you see it all the time you got one side that's like we'll just build more nuclear you know or you have another side that's uh you know so many
people complaining about EVS uh you know not everyone can drive an electric electric vehicle because of
all the mining and all this stuff you know I mean there's a lot of complicated sides to it we need to get we need to
get a nuclear futurist on the show actually talk about next Generation nuclear Tech like the thorium reactors
Tok reactors stuff like that for for the people who are watching the live stream Dave Burch is is giving us
is peppering us with very funny forecasts I'm G to read a few of them now this is from Dave uh the US will
break up just like the Soviet Union did a new religion will start on Tik Tock I'm with him on that I think it is a new
religion and social media will be regulated like smoking good work Dave we should all be doing a little future
forecasting here I think all right I agree with all three of
those especially the first one absolutely um well you know the
likelihood I mean if you look at things now um in the United States you know
particularly with what's happening in Florida and and so forth I you know it's hard to
imagine at a time when the United States could be United in purpose again unless
it's maybe a war with China but you know who wants that to to bring the US people
together um but almost every um depiction of the future when it comes
to the United States depicts the United States is breaking apart yeah ideolog California becoming two parts Northern
California Southern started that's the history of the United States we've been through
much much worse in this country and it's not just a civil war that I'm referring to so it's a pretty resilient place I
mean that said right now we seem to have op in op in real like where you can choose your reality that's problematic
for a democracy because if you can't agree on what the facts are if you can't agree on what the situation actually is
then it's gonna be pretty hard to talk about a remedy or fix for it but I think are gonna be go ahead no worries uh
autonomous cities are going to be a big part of this as well I mean I could definitely see if he's not already
working on it I think he mentioned it once but Elon Musk mentioned uh possibly creating a an independent corporate uh
City somewhere you know maybe in Texas I I don't know well he wants to do it as a
trial for what the Smart City on Mars is going to look like which makes sense right Elon mus well I I uh I can't put
my faith not his best week I would say yeah I can't put my faith calls him alien musk but anyway who's
perpetuating our our our human potential by distorting facts and truths and this
is this is certainly not where we can go it's like it's like Rob to your point the uh the confirmation bias Channel you
know the CBC your favorite Channel on on TV today only confirms what you already believe and is accelerating a race to
the bottom of human potential it is it's actually something that we could use more discussion around well we've only
got a few minutes before the top of the hour it is designed as an hour show so
um I thought um what we could do now is talk about what's coming up in the second season yeah of the
futurists um we hope to have for you um at least three guests that are in the
works right now um the first is Peter diamandes who um is we are looking at
scheduling right now hopefully that comes off abundance yep Dr Robert Zubin
um from the Mars Society um he's got a new book out on the case for nuclear
actually case for nuke so um we'll see uh see if we can get Dr Zubin on and we
just asked David Brin to introduce us to the leading Eco um uh SC science fiction
writer E Eco climate science fiction writer day which is none other than Kim Stanley Robinson so fingers crossed this
would be a major get for us so um so there's there's a bit of a glimpse of uh
some of the the guests coming up in the second season who who else do you guys want to see on the show this year oh wow
I mean there's so many it's hard to say I like to see Elon Musk because I
know he's controversial I know but listen some people people don't you know
yeah Jesus there is I'd like to see Jame James gun on the show
okay great yeah interesting I'm I'm working on a number
of guests right now but it's a little too soon for me to say who will be joining us uh one fellow I want to have
on soon is Michael Margolis who's more of a philosophical thinker we had some
success with people who uh think about storytelling as a way to define ourselves and and that might seem odd
for a show about futurists but if you think about what scenario planning really is you know when you posit a scenario about the future you're telling
a story you're really you know anytime you're projecting something past five years you're no longer extrapolating
from existing Trends you're telling a good story and Michael thinks deeply about that so we'll be having him on the
show soon as well fantastic i' like to get Peter Schwarz on on the show oh for sure got do that that's a great
suggestion he is the original scenario planner hey for the folks who are listening thank you very kindly for your support thanks for listening to the show
thanks for telling your friends about it it means an enormous amount to us you can see this is a labor of love um Brett
came to me with the idea more than a year ago and we were kicking it around we're like let's just do it let's reclaim that term futurists let's inject
a little new meaning into it and this is a debate I with Mike Walsh actually whether futurist was a positive term or
a negative term but we got to get him on too actually we should actually and uh and and so thank you
everybody who's who's been listening and supporting us along the way that's been really great we've gotten great in feedback great feedback suggestions
comments and questions all of that means so much to us so thank you all for that Katie Brian it's great to have you join
the club our growing club of futurists our hearty band of futurists uh charting
a path into the future uh so thank you all very much for joining us here it's top of the hour so it's probably time so
there remains only one thing to say which is we will see you in theut in the
future future all right thank you all bye
[Music] everybody well that's it for the futurists this week if you like the show
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