Reflections on Moore's Law
This is posted on many websites. It's a nice summary of Moore's law's effects. It is an appropriate article for Labor Day.
My comments are in brackets.
In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen to a lot of industries in the next 10 years - and most people don't see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on paper film again? Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore's law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a long time, before it became way superior and got mainstream in only a few short years. It will now happen with Artificial Intelligence, Health, Autonomous and Electric cars, Education, 3D printing, Agriculture and Jobs. Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Welcome to the Exponential Age. Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years. Uber is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.
[Thesis: we are in the exponential phase of Moore's law's effects. In the analogy, we are in the later days of the daily doubling of lily pads on a lake. Problem: there is nothing in Moore's law to say that the effects will not continue. What about 2070? 2150? How long can an exponential curve stay exponential? Society has never faced this before.
How do you keep a 6-year-old away from a machine gun? "Please put that down." What if there are 9 billion people with the same old sin nature, each working three hours a day, but all well-fed? "The devil loves idle hands." Does he ever!
There is a classic movie on this: Forbidden Planet (1956). It is the story of the Krell. We are headed that way ethically/technologically.]
Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best GO player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected. In the US, young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. So if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90% less lawyers in the future, only specialists will remain.
[This is correct. This is how the common man will be able to jam the legal system. I wrote about this strategy over 30 years ago. Will clogged courts free up the federal government? I think not. Jammed courts are the ultimate nightmare for the federal government. But what happens when the courts jam up? How will we get justice?]
Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, 4 times more accurate than human nurses. Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans.
[We will get better, cheaper health care. But few people will change their bad habits.]
In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.
[And now for the #1 threat: what about 2031? 2051? 2290? The process either stops, or else the algorithms take over. This is the fundamental existential question we face. No one has an accepted answer. But a computer may have one in 2050. Or 2070.]
Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars will appear for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don't want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver's license and will never own a car. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% less cars for that. We can transform former parking space into parks. 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 100,000km, with autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 10 million km. That will save a million lives each year. Most car companies might become bankrupt. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels. I spoke to a lot of engineers from Volkswagen and Audi; they are completely terrified of Tesla. Insurance companies will have massive trouble because without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear. Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighborhood.
[If most car companies are bankrupt, who will produce safe autonomous cars? How much will they cost? Will computers produce them? I think so.]
Won't need as many garages if fewer people have cars, so living in the city may become more attractive as people like being around other people. That won't change.
[We long ago stopped parking our cars in our garage. We use our garages for storage. My 5-year-old grandson came into the basement to see my office two weeks ago. I asked him: "What do we call this place?" He answered immediately, "A garage." He made the connection. My basement is 80% storage. His family's garage is for storage. So is mine.]
Electric cars won't become mainstream until 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all cars will run on electric.
[I won't sell my car. I don't drive much. My guess is that few people who have driver's licenses will sell their cars. But a growing percentage will not buy a replacement second car.]
Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can only now see the impact. Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. The price for solar will drop so much that all coal companies will be out of business by 2025. With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter. We don't have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost.
[Most of us have this now. This will change villages far more than it changes the West.]
Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There will be companies who will build a medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, you blood sample and you breath into it. It then analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medicine, nearly for free.
[So, will people stop drinking, smoking, and eating too many calories? We know what kills us: bad habits and incurable diseases. But at least it will be cheap to get diagnosed.]
3D printing: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies started 3D printing shoes. Spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to have in the past. At the end of this year, new smartphones will have 3D scanning possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home. In China, they already 3D printed a complete 6-story office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that's being produced will be 3D printed. Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to go in, ask yourself: "in the future, do you think we will have that?" and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner? If it doesn't work with your phone, forget the idea. And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to failure in the 21st century.
[No more imports of 80% of imported manufactured goods. No more scare stories from Donald Trump and Pat Buchanan. No more borders to cross. No more money from tariffs. No more patent protection. Just download the pirated digital program. No more courts in which to sue to protect patents. Courts will be jammed. At zero price, there is greater demand than supply. Free courts will be jammed courts. Things will be settled out of court. Get into the arbitration business if you are a lawyer.]
Work: 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a small time.
[It is not clear at all. The time factor is the key: the speed of adjustment. This is accelerating. Services will multiply. Find ways of making other people happy. Get part of their discretionary income, which will rise. Stay ahead of the many career curves. I recommend major repair services: plumbing, electrical. No robots yet.]
Agriculture: There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field instead of working all days on their fields. Aeroponics will need much less water. The first petri dish produced veal is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces is used for cows. Imagine if we don't need that space anymore. There are several startups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labeled as "alternative protein source" (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).
[We will all become John the Baptist, eating locusts and honey. There will be no starvation in 30 years. That scourge will go the way of all flesh. There will still be diet books. They will still not work. Invent a pain-free diet pill, and you will get rich.]
There is an app called "moodies" which can already tell in which mood you are. Until 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where it's being displayed when they are telling the truth and when not.
[Now, this really is scary. No more lying. Remember Liar, Liar? Think of a world in which lawyers cannot lie. (Will algorithm lawyers lie?) Think of a world in which adultery is easily tested, cheap. Think of married couples who must tell the truth all the time. Are we ready for this?]
Bitcoin will become mainstream this year and might even become the default reserve currency.
[This is science fiction.]
Longevity: Right now, the average life span increases by 3 months per year. Four years ago, the life span used to be 79 years, now it's 80 years. The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more than one year increase per year. So we all might live for a long long time, probably way more than 100.
[Think of Social Security's solvency. Think of annuities. Think of retirement programs.]
The world has always had an overpopulation problem within recent history, and all this will make it worse. Technology may grow by leaps and bounds, but human enculturation will not. We will have the same political greed for power and control, others kicking back, and wars will continue. The new technology will be evident in the tools of war, and the death rate could be staggering. Continued overpopulation will make cemeteries unpopular and there will be a push to replace them with something that does not take up space. Or continuing rent will need be paid to stay there.
[Non-state biological warfare is my nightmare.]
Education: The cheapest smartphones are already at $10 in Africa and Asia. Until 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smartphone. That means, everyone has the same access to world class education. Every child can use Khan Academy for everything a child learns at school in First World countries. We have already released our software in Indonesia and will release it in Arabic, Swaheli and Chinese this Summer, because I see an enormous potential. We will give the English app for free, so that children in Africa can become fluent in English within half a year.
[Think: the end of the effects of the tower of Babel -- God's limitation on man's quest for power. What will then limit mankind's quest for power? I know: robots! Here come Gort and his associates! Here come the watchbirds.]