Electric Revolution - The Blind Leading The Blind Into The Future
From electric vehicles and AI to the shift toward a sustainable society, this 5th episode in The World in 2035 series, titled "The Blind Leading the Blind into the Future" discusses the challenges and uncertainties that lie ahead as governments, businesses, and individuals navigate rapid technological advancements without clear plans in place.
It dives into 3 major trends:
- Electrification
- Artificial Intelligence
- Sustainability
I question whether those in power truly understand the consequences of their decisions.
If you would prefer to read about it, there is a transcript below the video.
The Blind Leading The Blind Into The Future - VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
This is the 5th video of my series, the world in 2035 and it's called The Blind Leading The Blind Into The Future.
More change is awaiting the present generations than ever before and change will come more rapidly than we have ever before experienced.
Historically, technology development and the implementation of new technologies has taken more than half a century. In 1882, Thomas Edison opened the first power station, and in 1960 almost all homes in the United States had electric lighting. This is a period of 80 years, almost.
Up until 1950, electricity was used mainly for lighting. Since then, power is used for many more purposes, but this development has started only 70 years ago. First modern internal combustion engine was built in 1876 by Nicolaus Otto and in 1929, 60% of American households owned a car. And in 2022 92% of American households had at least one vehicle.
So it was a very long term change of over 150 years. In Europe, the development was slower in both cases.
In 1961, nearly 1/3rd of all British households owned a car. Now 3 megatrends are expected to change almost everything in 15 or 20 years.
Rate of change that we have never experienced before.
Electric vehicles are expected to take over all transportation and we are going to electrify several areas of society. The sales of new petrol and diesel cars will be banned in Europe from 2035 and diesel trucks will be rapidly phased out starting immediately.
Artificial intelligence will change the work life and job markets for many millions of people. The International Monetary Fund has found that 60% of all jobs will be impacted by artificial intelligence or AI. Many jobs are likely to be taken over by computers when AI tools start to become used on a large scale and this could happen very rapidly.
And then we have the large scale change to sustainable society, which involves a number of different changes that have not been mapped so far. For both these developments destroying existing structures goes fast, but building new transport systems and job markets to replace the existing ones will take a long time. Despite all the hype the change to sustainable society has barely even started, and few people understand the amount of resources that will be needed to rebuild many of the world's largest industries to become sustainable.
Governments are running blindly into the future.
At present, there are 3% electric cars in Europe, and the share of other sustainable technologies and systems is much lower. And artificial intelligence is only used to a small extent.
Over the next decade everything is supposed to change without a plan.
All these technologies are expected to be implemented on a large scale and millions of people across the world are likely to become unemployed through these measures and developments. There is no plan for the creation of new jobs and few people understand the consequences of the rapid implementation of artificial intelligence, the rapid electrification and the supposed change to sustainable society.
Electrification and the changes to sustainable society require TRILLIONS of dollars in investment.
Now the resources are spread very thinly across hundreds of different change areas, which means that very little is achieved in any of those. And it is fair to say, quoting the fairy tale of Hans Christian Andersen, that the emperor has no clothes.
Sustainability experts, business leaders and people in general, they do not have a plan for the change. Small pilot attempts are made, but there is no large scale change on the horizon.
Governments do not understand the consequences of their decisions.
The EU and UK government have decided to ban the sales of new petrol and diesel cars, but there is not enough electricity to power all cars. And then very large investments will be needed in order to facilitate the change to new ev vehicles and new types of transportation.
But there are no plans for these investments. T
he decisions mean that governments will force people to buy vehicles that will not all be possible charged at all times going forward. At some point in the near future, all vehicles cannot be charged.
IT development has made huge progress. The prerequisites for the rapid implementation of AI are already in our pockets and on our desktop. So this change to artificial intelligence will go very rapidly.
But these large scale changes are likely to wreak havoc on the lives of a large share of families and individuals without anyone understanding what we need to do to control these developments.
Read my recent book, the severe economic and social consequences of the rapid change to electric vehicles to learn more about one of the aspects of this video series: https://amzn.to/3UQCf0t
I'm in the process of writing my next book, The World in 2035, which will describe the complex challenges facing humanity over the coming decade as present generations tackle the complex issues of implementing a number of new technologies. If you're interested in the technology changes in the near future, please subscribe to my YouTube channel or join my mailing list below.