Talking AI with Jillian Michaels, Hydropanels Make Water Out of Thin Air, A Book from Chris Dixon, & More
Future Essentials - Edition 41
Hi everyone -
Technology is the most powerful force shaping the future. It can work for or against you.
Let’s make it the former.
Hope you enjoy this edition. Leave a comment and let me know what’s on your mind.
Misha
How to get the most from this newsletter:
Scan the whole thing, from top to bottom.
Select the item/s that interest you the most, and dive in.
If you get value from one of the 10 future essentials, you will already be smarter about the future.
Here’s some of what you’re getting this week:
Humans are not mentally ready for an AI world.
More than 50% of Fortune 100 companies have blockchain initiatives.
Hydropanels attach to homes and create drinking water out of thin air.
Talking AI and more on the Jillian Michaels podcast.
Chris Dixon writes a book.
TECH
GENERATIVE-AI
Humans Aren’t Mentally Ready for an AI-Saturated ‘Post-Truth World.
The AI era promises a flood of disinformation, deepfakes, and hallucinated “facts.” Psychologists are only beginning to grapple with the implications.
AI will obviously make it easier to produce disinformation—from fake images to deepfakes to fake news. That will affect people’s sense of trust as they’re scrolling on social media. AI can also allow someone to imitate your loved ones, which further erodes people’s general ability to trust what was once unquestionable. That may also affect how they think about identity. And AI will make it significantly easier to convince people of false narratives. LINK
FE Take: Social media was/is humanity’s first mass encounter with AI. The results were and are disastrous. Generative AI will only make things worse. Prepare yourself and get ahead of the carnage.
Celebrities use AI to take control of their own images.
Celebrities are making deals with brands to put AI-created duplicates of themselves into marketing campaigns—giving them more control over their own likenesses and more latitude in the types of deals they can make. Brands, meanwhile, can use digital duplicates in ways they never could use the stars themselves—such as changing the stars’ appearance to de-age them, having them perform feats the real celebrities never could and holding spontaneous conversations with customers. LINK
FE Take: The future will be replete with AI imagery. Open online spaces will be mind-bending at best, dystopian at worst. This will create a need for private worlds and gated spaces where people can know and trust what they encounter.
WEB3
More than 50% of Fortune 100 companies have blockchain initiatives.
More than half—52%—of the Fortune 100 have pursued crypto, blockchain or web3 initiatives since the start of 2020.These companies, among the world’s largest and best known, are innovating and investing in these technologies because they know that our century-old global financial system needs updating, that blockchain can be a foundational solution, and that not keeping pace will mean losing ground in this global economy to competitors around the world, among other reasons.
Get the full report from Coinbase. LINK
FE Take: If you doubted the staying power of web3/crypto this helps you understand what’s really happening on the ground. These technologies will prevail.
"Napoleon Dynamite" cast reunite for an animated pilot exclusive to NFT holders.
Armed with that star power and the novel hook of a “Napoleon Dynamite” reunion, Rob Feldman was able to sell NFT access passes for “Cyko KO” that offered holders exclusive access to view the series’ first episode, once produced. The sale raised over $118,000, enough to create a 12-minute pilot.
That method of producing—tapping into an organic fanbase to realize a creative vision, instead of depending on the external, centralized power of Hollywood—resonated is the web3 way of doing business. LINK
FE Take: The future of entertainment is web3. NFTs create powerful new possibilities for creatives to interact with audiences/fans and fund their projects.
What is warm crypto?
Beyond the bad news headlines, there is an underlying bedrock of high-minded individuals using web3 to create a more fair and equitable future for artists, musicians, brands, etc.
Warm crypto is digital currency used for good. This concept is about the power of community, and I believe it can apply to any charity, business, or business leader. When a community comes together, often seemingly impossible things can happen. LINK
FE Take: Web3 offers tools that anyone can use to have positive impact. Don’t wait for mass adoption. Find ways to use these tools in your work and life.
PRIVACY
Genetic Testing Company 1Health Failed to Protect Privacy and Security of DNA Data
The Federal Trade Commission charged that the genetic testing firm 1Health.io left sensitive genetic and health data unsecured, deceived consumers about their ability to get their data deleted and changed its privacy policy retroactively without adequately notifying and obtaining consent from consumers whose data the company had already collected. LINK
FE Take: We need to stop believing companies when they say our data is safe or private. It’s simply not true. I’m looking forward to Zero Knowledge apps and the coming era of privacy that web3 brings to the internet.
FUTURE OF WATER
Hydropanels attach to homes and create drinking water out of thin air.
Clean, renewable drinking water made straight out of thin air almost sounds too wild to be true.
But “hydropanels,” created by the Arizona-based company SOURCE, can do just that. The high-tech panels use the sun to extract moisture from the air, providing safe drinking water for many of the places around the world that need it most.
The technology is straightforward. Fans on each panel draw in ambient air and push it through a water-absorbing material, trapping the vapor from the air. The vapor is then condensed into a liquid using energy from the sun, after which it’s collected in a reservoir. The water is then mineralized with magnesium and calcium to maintain quality and achieve a better taste. LINK
FE Take: Technology can solve humanity’s most intractable problems. We need to make sure that tech solutions are democratized and made accessible to the people who need them.
PODCAST
Talking AI and more on the Jillian Michaels podcast.
People are super concerned about AI and how it will impact their lives. This is what I learned as a guest on the Jillian Michaels Back in the Saddle podcast. Jillian and co-host Janice Ungaro had a million questions about AI and how it will upend life as we know it.
My segment starts around 10 minutes in.
FE Take: The best response to AI is to learn like your life depends on it and make this technology work for you.
BOOK
Read Write Own Building the Next Era of the Internet by Chris Dixon
This first book from the influential entrepreneur, tech investor, and founding father of web3 is a “potent exploration of the power of blockchains to reshape the future of the Internet—and how that affects us all.”
FE Take: Having read most of Chris’ prolific blog posts and Twitter threads, I expect this to become one of the more significant books on technology this century. You are guaranteed a breadth of vision, depth of insight, profound understanding of technology and humanity—past and future, and a delightful mastery of prose. And you will understand the most powerful technological force on the planet. It’s simply a must-read!
Pre-order it here: READ WRITE OWN
POLL
How prepared are you for 2030?
That’s it for this week. If you got this far, you’re already much smarter about the future.
Leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts about this edition, or the future.
loved it
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