Futurology

Here's a Jan 25th 2025 quote on X/Twitter (which his firm helped Musk buy) from Marc Anderessen, head of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz/a16z.

"A world in which human wages crash from AI -- logically, necessarily -- is a world in which productivity growth goes through the roof, and prices for goods and services crash to near zero. Consumer cornucopia. Everything you need and want for pennies."

This is the world Big Tech is building for us. Given their hold over the current US administration, barring a political revolution - there's not much to stop them for the next 4 years.

If their power to create that world via AI & robotics is seemingly unstoppable, what about a counter-intuitive idea? Engage them on it seriously. At the very least the transition to this world might need the kind of emergency economic supports the Covid era had.

It seems strange Big Tech is so open about what it intends to do, yet we are still not taking it seriously, despite them saying it all out loud.

Throughout 2024 Open Source AI has been slowly catching up with investor-funded AI, but in the first weeks of 2025 that has dramatically accelerated. Now Open Source isn't just catching up, it is arguably better and superior to investor-funded AI.

Restrictions on chip imports seem to be driving Chinese innovation, not slowing them down. Using lesser chips, they've optimized AI to run cheaper and more efficiently, but be just as powerful. Not only that, they've open-sourced that AI.

Where does that leave the hundreds of billions poured into investor-funded AI? Who knows. But they've no product to sell that people can't get elsewhere way cheaper or for free.

This also means AI will become decentralized and democratized. Many thought it would just be in the hands of Big Tech, but the exact opposite scenario is playing out.

What are the economic implications? AI hype is keeping the US stock market afloat - how long can that last?

Source

The new US President has used his first 24 hours to pull all US government support for the green energy transition. He wants to ban any new wind energy projects and withdraw support for electric cars. His new energy policy refused to even mention solar panels, wind turbines, or battery storage - the world's fastest-growing energy sources. Meanwhile, he wants to pour money into dying and declining industries - like gasoline-powered cars and expanding oil drilling.

China was the global leader in 21st-century energy before, but its future global dominance is now assured. There will be trillions of dollars to be made supplying the planet with green energy infrastructure in the coming decades. Decarbonizing the planet, and electrifying the global south with renewables will be the largest industrial project in human history.

Source 1

Source 2

Here's the second.