Back in the summer of 2017, now 3.5 years ago, my company hired a futurist (i.e. fortune teller) named Salim Ismail to come and tell us the future. Let’s see how he’s doing:
1. “Singapore wants to have all of its taxis be self-driving cars by the end of this year. Normally I’d say that’s crazy but with Singapore you never know.”
Answer: No. In fact recently the Singapore government was intent on giving “more financial aid to taxi and private-hire car drivers as the Covid-19 pandemic takes a bigger toll on business”.
2. Five years - no internal combustion cars because battery technology is improving exponentially.
Answer: Not even close yet.
3. 8 years - no one will buy cars. It will make no sense. “I predict my five year old son will never learn to drive a car or own a car.” Transportation will become a service, not a product.
Answer: He’s still got 4.5 years but this doesn’t look good.
4. 10 years - hyperloop and drones for commercial delivery. Six million truck drivers and associated jobs will be out of luck.
Answer: He’s got 6.5 years. We’ll see.
5. He says that suburbs will spike in real estate value because no one will have to live close to work. Location won’t matter when you have self-driving cars. Uber and drones will make deliveries, again meaning location of restaurants or what have you less meaningful. For one thing, you get 10-15x increase in capacity of roads due to cars being able to ride the next car’s bumper.
Answer: This seems legit because of covid rather than Uber and drones.
6. Artificial Intelligence doctor in a handheld device recently performed better than most doctors at a diagnosis. A.I. was also able to beat poker champions.
Answer: Still going to doc.
7. Solar energy is going to have the biggest impact. Solar cells for 40 years have doubled every 22 months. Doubling in price/performance every 22 months. At this pace we will hit 100% of world’s energy supply in 14 years. Middle East will completely collapse. Russia will have no option but to invade Europe since cost of energy will be zero. Cost of solar modules plummeting. No economic basis for Keystone pipeline. Country of Chile already generating so much solar it’s giving energy to its neighbors for free.
Answer: So far plenty of economic basis for Keystone. Even Chile is mostly getting lower energy prices to large mining companies that pay lower energy prices. “The benefits haven’t reached ordinary people.”
The current levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for unsubsidized Solar PV has moved from $46 in ’18 to $44 in ’19 to $42 in ’20. Not exactly exponential.
6. We invented representative democracy when information was scarce. You didn’t know what was happening in California if you were in D.C. so you had a representative from California. The speed of a horse was as fast as you could find out. When you have an abundance it can be misinterpreted, misused, faked. Democracy does not work in an abundance of information. How do you update that? System was designed for a scarcity of information.
Answer: Well, bingo on this one.
7. And we’re also really worried about climate change. Miami will disappear in 20 years.
Answer: We’ll see.
8. Bitcoin is disruptive and may become reserve currency. I give retail banking about 10 years.
Answer: Interesting but too early to tell.
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