Prediction Markets

Bet on Kalshi. Prediction markets will become larger than you can imagine today.

Professional firms who trade almost exclusively prediction markets will appear, mostly comprised of gen-z talent.
prediction markets will expand into adjacent sectors, such as 'buying' an artist's 'stock'- if they blow up on spotify for example, you get money.

Autonomous Driving

Bet on Waymo. Driving cars manually will become like writing an essay by hand.

Another decade after that, owning a car in the usa will be considered a luxury, not a necessity.

Tech Companies in Defense

Bet on SpaceX, Palantir, Anduril, and Cape.

Making money in this industry is too easy. These four companies (and maybe some new ones!) will consume all important government contracts, becoming large corporations and kicking nokia, ericsson, and others out of the space.

AI and the Future of Work

TLDR

Knowledge work is not doomed. The problems we're able to tackle just get more complicated.
Layoffs and hiring freezes are coming, but are not permanent.

If you want to make yourself AI-proof, all you have to do is learn how to solve hard problems of any kind.

We've all seen an infinite pig trough of AI predictions from people of all backgrounds and professions; here I am adding to that trough by documenting my predictions for what AI will become in the next decade.

Who will succeed in the AI era?

Just as the internet made it 99% easier to look stuff up, AI makes it 99% easier to execute routine tasks.

When the internet became widespread, did people who learned from books become less capable? No, they still performed well in their jobs, because knowledge work is fundamentally about solving hard problems and understanding complexity. The professionals who succeed are those with the discipline and smarts to introduce new tools that accelerate their workflow when appropriate, while focusing on learning how to dissect hard problems.

In the era of AI, the professionals who will succeed are not those who use AI or don't use AI; it's those who know when to use AI and when not to use it.

AI automates basic tasks. Asking an AI tool to draft a contract, analyze data, write code, or summarize research has become fairly deterministic in nature. When ChatGPT 3.5 released, it was maybe able to ace a geology quiz. Now, it can perform tasks that previously required years of training. The problems AI can tackle become more and more complex, which doesn't mean humans are being replaced, it means humans are being elevated.

A smart professional will use AI to complete simple tasks while they work on harder things. As AI continues to grow, knowledge workers will be able to accomplish more. Companies will either become leaner or deliver a more impressive product.

Is my job safe?

In the short term, no. In the long term, yes. Typically, mature companies scale somewhat linearly with hiring: expanding the workforce by 10% every year or something similar, as they reach a larger scale. Companies are realizing that they don't need to expand as much, because AI tooling is making their existing employees much more efficient, allowing them to complete their previously expected duties fairly quickly and take on more work as needed.

However, these companies will be growing at a pre-AI pace. The companies that will emerge victorious from the AI bubble are those that continue hiring, thus growing exponentially. If one employee can now do the work of two pre-AI employees, that doesn't mean you should hire 50% fewer people, it means you should keep hiring at the same rate and grow twice as fast for the same price.

Few companies realize this though, the short-term profits are tempting. KPIs are improving; the company is stable; nothing seems to be out of the ordinary, so why accelerate hiring? These companies will slowly become relics of the past, such as Yahoo or Adobe.

Nothing really made Adobe and Yahoo die overnight, people just found better alternatives while those companies spent pseudo-productive time on internal politics and meetings. The same will happen to companies that refuse to keep hiring in the AI era.

So, in the short term, hiring will slow down and layoffs will happen in the event of a recession, but it will return to normal once C-suite executives understand what's actually happening instead of chasing KPIs.

Will industries die because of AI?

Yes. Industries will become extinct because of AI, but new ones will appear. Such is the cycle of business.

Will the youth become dumber?

Yes. As humans make more tools (fire, spears, houses, running water, computers, AI), they become less and less capable on their own. However, they end up accomplishing more, because their new tools simply allow them to work less and accomplish more.

See you in 2036!