The Games we must play and the future
We are all playing a game. The Game of life. One must define the game. Games share come common characteristics:
Goal or an objective:
They have Scores or levels
They Unlock access by demonstrating skills:
They are fun
They elicit strong emotions
Challenge and reward have some correlation
Most of life is a game. You can play multiple game at once - having a great family is a game in itself. Having influence on millions of people is another game, having lots of money is be another game. One can play mutliple games together and most people do.
They just don’t articulate it. So at any given point, they don’t know which games they are playing - what the levels are, what is the core objective in that moment, and how to have fun in that game.
Anyway, I will write a whole different post on how to construct life into games and play as such. One of the games I am deeply interested in is creating wealth through technology disruption.
In order to play this game, one must develop the skill to understand what core fundamental technology changes are happening around us and intuit what adoption of these changes will look like over the next 10-20 years.
Some fundamental changes I believe are happening:
Cost of GPUs is reducing 50% every year for same performance: This means in 5 years cost of compute will be 30x cheaper. Think about various applications of GPUs and what such a cost reduction could entail for existing industries and disruption of established businesses. If this sounds crazy - digest this: In last 60 years, cost of GFLOP has come down for $10 billion to 1 cent.
AI is becoming an application layer vs R&D line item: AI applications are penetrating faster than internet or emails did. Even though cost per TFLOP will be 30x down in 5 years, the overall demand of TFLOPs in going to grow probably 100x. Imagine all the manual data inference work which is going to be automated soon.
All money will move to digital: Credit history is outdated (someone will disrupt this), all money transactions will happen digitally. Eventually fed will print its last paper currency (in few decades, but death will be very clear in 5-10 yr time horizon). Inter-business credit lines, business insurance, money transfers (including inter-bank transfers) are slow and outdated. If all transactions happen digitally, the whole payment infrastructure will look very different 20 years from now.
Machines will be cheaper than the lowest cost labor: This means our clothes will no longer be made in Bangladesh or Veitnam. We will be manufacturing things locally including food.
Batteries will become a key energy source. Battery density is doubling every 18-24 months. Economies of scale combined with technology improvements will make batteries be used in everything from flying to almost all our energy needs. Batteries will be huge.
Millennials disrupted the suits, the newer generation is going to disrupt long term employment: The modern company will no longer be built on previous principles of long term knowledge workers incentivized to move through corporate ladders but will be built on its strength to assemble top notch teams for projects on hand and move onto other tasks. There will be more 1099 workers than W2 workers. AI models will ensure knowledge management between teams and projects. This might sound outlandish, but # of 1099 workers have 2x in just the last 2 years as Genz enter workforce. We have 31million+ 1099 in 2022 vs 15 million in 2020. 62% of GenZ report a side hustle. Wait till the side hustle grows. Any company helping more people earn through side hustle or part time gigs is going to win big. And NO! Upwork isn’t about side hustle - upwork is about taking low quality tasks and moving them from high paying countries to low paying countries.
Software will eat. industrial 4.0: Most industries have bought their first SaaS tools in the last 5 years and are highly under-penetrated. In 2023 software might look bleak or multiples might look like they will never rise again - but wait and in 10 years you will be kicking yourself for not
AI driven music and art will become the norm: Berlin raves at Berghain will feature its first AI DJ - with ravers dancing for 60 hours of techno produced purely by a machine. Best artists will use AI to create art unimagined before - move over impressionists or surrealists, the new era might be called the “artificial imagination” era - where all concepts of reality can bend.
Staying young will become a $1 trillion industry very soon.
So what game will you be playing?
