EIEIO...Learning at the Speed of Light
Cheaper, faster, and better in the age of AI
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EIEIO…Fast Facts
Entrepreneurship: #1 – Nevada’s national ranking in business creation rate by state (U.S. News)
Innovation: 700 – the number of full-time customer service agents' workload handled by Klarna's AI assistant, which processed 2.3 million conversations over the past year (Forbes)
Education: 1.6 out of 5 – the average K-12 teacher “AI Comfort Level” (Frontline Education) h/t
Impact: 53% – percentage of U.S. adults (who have heard of Ozempic, Wegovy and other similar drugs) who say they are “good options” for weight loss for people with obesity or a weight-related health condition, compared to only 12% who say they are “good options” for people who want to lose weight but do not have a weight-related health condition (Pew Research)
Opportunity: 1.5 billion – number of pounds of clothing discarded by Americans each year (Washington Post)
“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.” – Douglas Adams
“Time is money. So I bought a Rolex.” – Wiz Khalifa
“Live as if you were going to die tomorrow, learn as if you are going to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“The more you read, the more things you know. The more you learn, the more places you go.” – Dr. Seuss
Despite the fact that our brains have been getting smaller for 10,000 years, our cognitive processing power has progressively increased.
In fact, due to education, nutrition, access to information, and medical care, our intelligence has been improving about 2% per decade for the past hundred years. For those who know the Rule of 72, you could quickly calculate that our brains are doubling in smartness every 350 years or so.
So in other words, the average Philly fan pontificating about why the Eagles should run the ball more on first down has twice the cognitive power of the colonist in 1674 from Commonwealth of Pennsylvania who was complaining about the King.
OK…bad example.
While humankind could feel pretty smug about our intellectual capacity versus that of our forefathers, our brains have been stuck in quicksand compared to the growth of the cognitive power of computers.
Moore’s Law, coming up on its 60th anniversary next year, correctly postulated that computing power would double every couple of years. What’s so amazing about Moore’s Law isn’t just that it actually happened – transforming both the technology industry and society as we know it – but that it wasn't a scientific law or law of nature. Instead, it was Gordon Moore effectively willing a future into existence through his prediction.
Today, we take for granted technology that would have been beyond our imaginations even twenty years ago. These are things that have been enabled by Moore’s Law – from the supercomputer in your pocket, to autonomous vehicles, to games with stunning graphics, and of course now, generative AI.
People are really bad at predicting the future. Why? Because we tend to extrapolate the past forward. While that might work OK to forecast the weather for tomorrow, it’s no good if we go out a week, much less a month, and it’s useless for six months from now.
People are also really bad at comprehending exponential growth. If human brain power continues to grow at its historic rate, we will be roughly 4% smarter than we are today in the year 2044. If Moore’s Law continues for the next twenty years, computing power will be 1000X greater than today.
The “Singularity” – when computers surpass human intelligence – is expected to happen as early as 2026. Naturally, this leaves a lot of people wondering what’s going to happen to all of us humans.
When attempting to understand what the future might look like, it’s important to incorporate human nature into the equation, because it never changes.
Additionally, while the past isn’t prologue, we can learn from some lessons from history.
Fear sells. We are wired to be 10X more afraid than optimistic. Many view Wall Street strategists who are BEARS as brilliant people, although it’s hard to find many pessimists on the Forbes 400 list.
In 1970, LIFE magazine wrote an article about “Shakey the robot” and how it would replace all of our jobs. Interestingly, today many of the countries with the highest utilization of robot workers also have some of the lowest unemployment rates.
We optimistically view Artificial Intelligence as the great accelerator, not just for technological innovation but for people. AI is like AIR – it’s invisible, it’s ubiquitous, and you are going to need it to live.
One of the greatest attributes of AI is that it manufactures time. What took a year, can now take a month. What took a month can take a week. What took a week can happen in a day. What took a day, could take seconds.
Affluent people have always been able to manufacture time by trading money for it. Gardeners, housekeepers, executive assistants, drivers, private planes, and personal coaches have all been at the disposal of the “movers and shakers” because, after all, time is money. When do you think was the last time Elon Musk made a dinner reservation?
The reality is that anybody with a smartphone – and there are six billion of us – can have an AI assistant or co-pilot. These AI tools can efficiently perform a wide range of tasks (often for free) that previously consumed significant portions of our waking hours. Everybody can have a personal assistant, chief of staff, tutor, or health coach available anytime, anywhere, for (nearly) everything. Tireless, relentless, and emotionless…no more tears, complaints about bonuses or PDOs.
Watch: MultiOn’s AI agent makes a dinner reservation for its user.
While some believe the time dividend we'll receive as shareholders of planet Earth will be spent on trivial pursuits, I foresee an explosion of innovation and human advancement beyond most people's imagination.
The invention of the combustion engine dramatically changed the game, not just for travel, but for communication. What once took the Pony Express weeks to deliver a message from one place to another now took a mere fraction of that time. Ironically, this advancement in physical transportation paved the way for electronic communication, which would later radically disrupt traditional travel itself.
Physical universities, physical libraries, and physical books were where knowledge was historically obtained, but there was a lot of friction in terms of cost and location. The Internet democratized learning by increasing access, lowering the cost, and by reimagining the offering…improving the quality in the process.
With powerful AI and the time dividend, we have the opportunity to reconceptualize how we acquire knowledge and dramatically increase our mental clock speed.
From the early days of DreamBox Learning fifteen years ago, we were excited about the potential for AI to create a more personalized learning experience. Photomath was an eye-opener by providing a real-time math tutor on your phone. With Generative AI, every student can have a 24/7 world-class tutor that knows what they know and what they don’t, how they best learn, and their goals. All elements gain ever-increasing levels of personalization, making the product and learning experience better and better.
Investing our time dividend by developing uniquely human skills and knowledge—areas where our machine counterparts can't compete—is key to society's prosperity. The 7 Cs are the areas that must be prioritized (Critical thinking, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Cultural Fluency, Civics, and Character). Notice that “coding” does not make the list. As Larry Summers recently said, telling somebody today they needed to code would be like telling somebody 30 years ago that they’d need to know how their car engine worked.
Life-long learning was a nice little phrase used to talk about the idea of extending one’s education beyond college. Now, it’s as fundamental to survival as water. From the minute you drive off the campus lot with your diploma, it begins to lose value. That is, unless you can continuously download and bolt-on new upgrades to your knowledge portfolio.
“Invisible Learning” will be a major way people will be educated in the future. AI can instantly take content from a text or podcast and create a game to reinforce the content or create an interactive quiz. You can’t learn if you aren’t engaged, and the world has 3.3 billion gamers – connect the dots here.
The old system was “Just in Case” learning, meaning you took a class just in case you might apply the content or skills acquired at some point down the road. Now, this has been replaced by “Just in Time” learning: acquiring knowledge precisely when and where you need it.
We are heading into an era of innovation and abundance that has the potential to make it the greatest time ever to be alive. To participate in that scenario, we as a country, enterprise, and as individuals need to be learning at the speed of light.
Market Performance
Market Commentary
The Market paused last week, partly for lack of breadth and partly from a presidential debate that took our breath away.
For the week, NASDAQ was up a tweak .2%, while the Dow and S&P were down a smidgen of .1% each. For the first six months, NASDAQ advanced 18.1% and the S&P increased 14.5%.
In sobering but not surprising news, Moody’s said that as much as 25% of office space was empty. Giving some anxiety relief, the 31 largest banks were given their risk management scorecard last week with all passing.
Saudi continues to aggressively invest in its transformation from an oil economy to a knowledge economy and is forecast to have the most construction of any place in the World by 2028.
Elections are going on around the globe with the common denominator being that the party currently in power is not popular. To wit, it looks like the conservative Tory party is headed for a route in Great Britain and the more Conservative Party in France appears to be in the pole position.
We continue to be positive on the outlook for growth companies but we want to see a broadening of participation in the upside. Markets need fresh oxygen to breathe with new issues historically being the best positive jolt to the system.
Need to Know
READ: Compute in America: Building the Next Generation of AI Infrastructure at Home | IFP
LISTEN: The Intersection of Technology and Human Learning with Joel Podolny of Honor Education | Edtech Insiders
READ: AI is Already Wreaking Havoc on Global Power Systems | Bloomberg
WATCH: Coatue’s Laffont on AI Darlings and Opportunities in Today’s Markets | Bloomberg Live
READ: Amazon is Secretly Working on a ChatGPT Killer | Business Insider
WATCH: Amazon is accelerating its use of robotics, with over 750,000 robots now working alongside its 1.5 million employees | Yorkshire Trading Academy
READ: AI Ruins Education The Way Pulleys Ruin Powerlifting | The Diff
READ: The A.I. Boom Has an Unlikely Early Winner: Wonky Consultants | NYT
GSV’s Four I’s of Investor Sentiment
GSV tracks four primary indicators of investor sentiment: inflows and outflows of mutual funds and ETFs, IPO activity, interest rates, and inflation.
#1: Inflows and Outflows for Mutual Funds & ETFs
#2: IPO Market
#3: Interest Rates
#4: Inflation
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Maggie Moe’s GSV Weekly Rap
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Connecting the Dots & EIEIO…
Old MacDonald had a farm, EIEIO. New MacDonald has a Startup….EIEIO: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Education, Impact and Opportunity. Accordingly, we focus on these key areas of the future.
One of the core goals of GSV is to connect the dots around EIEIO and provide perspective on where things are going and why. If you like this, please forward to your friends. Onward!
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-MM