We are living in fascinating times. Things are changing very rapidly and people from different walks of life are starting to monitor the progress of technology.
Many in the crypto industry are familiar with Raoul Pal. He is a longtime Bitcoin bull and, over the last half decade, starting go heavily into Ethereum. He use to manage money for Goldman Sachs so be blends the knowledge of traditional finance along with cryptocurrency.
He is also someone who watches technology. Since 2021, I noticed he took a closer look at what is going on, at least from his videos. His conclusions are intertwined with his economics background.
From this standpoint, he is drawing some interesting conclusions.
Image by Ideogram
Everything Will Change Around 2030
Pal asserts that everyone needs to make as much money as possible by 2030. His theory is everything will change in ways we cannot anticipate.
He is hardly alone in this belief, at least the latter. Many feel that what is taking place within technology is going to disrupt most industries by that time. This means that the global economy morphs into something we are not quite sure of.
What will it look like? How will the job situation be? What will we do for money?
These are all questions that many are asking. As of this moment, we really do not have clear cut answers.
At the core of this is artificial intelligence. While many contest the impact, and it is a hotly debated subject, there is little doubt that knowledge is going to near zero. Many get hung up on idea of AGI or singularity. It is clear we are heading in a direction where these systems are evolving and expanding with each generation.
Here is the video for those who want to view it:
@taskmaster4450/re-leothreads-vizx6jyc
Economic Singularity
Pal dives into something that we have discussed. The economic singularity is even less defined than that of technology. Here again, we are best to avoid specifics definition. Instead, simply focus upon the concept and direction things are heading.
Basically the economic singularity is a point where, mostly due to technology, we see an accelerating rate of growth that we have not witnessed before. This has the impact of shaping economies in a way where the foundation is completely altered.
AI and robotics are already starting to insert themselves in the labor equation. While most developed countries are facing a demographic crisis, robots are the answer. If the projects are true, and we have billions of robots by 2035, what does that mean for the economy?
The more advanced part of the equation is AI. We can see the progress of LLMs. ChatGPT is not even out 2 years yet look at the evolution. We now see new version of different models that surpass everything that was out. Whatever the leader is today, that will hold until one of the others releases it next version.
This means knowledge work is targeted. According to Groq, AGI can be thought of as this:
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) refers to a hypothetical type of artificial intelligence that possesses the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks, similar to human intelligence. AGI would be capable of general reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making, without being limited to a specific domain or task.
Here is where people are looking for a certain date. To me, this is not relevant. At present, we can see areas such as the material sciences and drug discovery where AI is more advanced than humans. These systems are trained on chemistry and can run complex models in minutes to determine what combination works. Of course, being housed in a computer, there is no way for the system to test this in a lab. Humans are still required for this part of the process, at least until robots can simply do it.
The point is where will things be in 2 years, let alone the 5 Pal discusses?
He is in the camp that we are going to see radical expansion in economic output by 2030. It is an observation that I agree with.
Of course, this brings up the proverbial question what are people going to do.
Massive Deflation
One of the keys is that we are going to see massive deflation. This is something that many thing is good since people have a weird view of inflation. The notion of prices goes down is a positive only holds until it is prices of things you benefit from.
For example, do you like selling your house and having to pay at closing? How do you like when your stocks go down? Crypto? What about when they cut your wages?
Actually, instead of wages going down, people will simply be laid off.
Here is where Web3 enters. blockchain is digital ownership. The question, and one posed by Pal also, is how does this even look in 2030. Certainly, there will be value in some areas as economic productivity could be tied to these networks.
We also can see where providing infrastructure is also going to be something that gives people an income. The ability to generate a profit of infrastructure is something that was reserved for a few. Fortunately, the same AI might help people in setting up the servers and other hardware that is required.
My view is that people who are already involved in Web3 and building are going to see a benefit. They will be positions because they have digital assets. At the same time, the few who do own some stocks, especially in those companies that are diving in deep into AI and robotics, will also do well. Unfortunately, this is only a miniscule part of the global population.
We will have to see if Pal's projections are right. In the meantime, it is probably a good idea to start accumulating some assets.