Can you feel the pace of change accelerating?
For most of humanity’s past, change has happened at glacial speeds.
When looking back at the rate of innovation and invention 100 years ago, the results are shocking.
My team and I found only 7 “major inventions” in 1922, such as the creation of the water skis and the malt blender. In 1923, there were some 12 great inventions, like the first electric shaver and the invention of sound-on-film technology (Phonofilm).
All noteworthy and important inventions, but nothing in comparison to the 278,000 patents filed in 2022 alone!
As we march toward the Singularity, it’s important to realize that the speed of change is accelerating—and every aspect of how we live our lives will change at a faster and faster rate.
Perhaps the main reason for this dramatic acceleration is the widespread use of AI everywhere, in every field.
I can’t think of a better person to discuss how AI is impacting the speed of change than Emad Mostaque, CEO of Stability AI, who I’ve had on my podcast and on the Abundance360 stage.
When I asked Emad how far out into the future he was able to predict, his answer floored me… “The compute is going exponential. I don’t even know where things will be in a year, let alone 5 years.”
Research papers on AI and machine learning are growing exponentially.
So, where are all these developments in AI leading us? How will the world be different in the near future?
In today’s blog, I want to summarize Emad’s insights on how AI will shape the future of 3 important industries: Education, Healthcare, and Hollywood.
Let’s dive in…
How AI Will Transform Education
Given how transformative generative AI tools like ChatGPT have been just in the last 6 months alone, what effects will they have on education in the next few years?
As Emad points out, with generative AI tools, education is forever changed. For example, homework will never be the same.
Some teachers and schools have come out saying that using these tools is a form of cheating, and others have banned ChatGPT.
But as Emad notes: “Education isn’t about competition. We made it a competition. It’s about actuation.”
Here’s Emad’s vision for the future of education, powered by AI: every student has their own personalized AI that is customized for them and looks out for them.
Are you a visual learner? Do you learn best through listening? Are you dyslexic?
This is all information that we have access to.
Imagine a future where an AI in a classroom adapts to each student’s learning style and pace, offering personalized education. It can track a given student’s progress, identify trouble areas, and adjust teaching approaches accordingly.
A future, more effective version of our education system is also experiential. It’s not about a book or a flat screen—it’s about going into a virtual world. Imagine all the possibilities of AI and VR to create more personalized and meaningful learning experiences. For example, using AI to map your personal preferences (e.g., your learning style or your favorite color) in VR so that your learning is more effective.
Or what if you could learn about ancient Greece from an AI avatar of Plato who understands how you specifically learn?
Given how fast everything is changing, we need to keep the world from revolting at the rate of disruption. This means giving people access to high-quality education and helping them believe that they have a future that is compelling and abundant.
AI allows us to create the world’s best education for your child, independent of where you live and how much wealth you have.
AI & The Future of Healthcare
One of the beautiful things about humans is that all 8 billion of us on the planet are nearly biologically identical.
This means something that works for one person in India or Iraq or Mexico, can also work for another person in San Francisco.
For Emad, one of the keys to bringing high-quality healthcare to more people is increasing information density and organized knowledge.
He told me the following story about his son to illustrate this point:
“When my son was diagnosed with autism, they said there's no cure, no treatment. So, I had to build an AI system to analyze all the medical clinical trials and do a first principles analysis to understand what could cause it… and then we did drug repurposing to ameliorate the symptoms.”
That ability should be available to everyone!
What many people don’t realize is that every time an AI learns something, it then shares what it’s learned with every other AI out there.
Whereas humans plateau in our understanding and knowledge after a certain point, as we update these large language models (LLMs) and generative AI tools, they’re getting better and smarter all the time.
Emad makes the key point that when you’re using tools like ChatGPT based on the GPT-4 language model, that’s just one model.
Imagine if there were 100 large language models all updating and checking each other. And then 10 of those models were dedicated to learning everything about you and how to increase your healthspan.
In the not-too-distant future, the best diagnosticians in the world will be AIs, and the best surgeons will be robots driven by AIs.
This is how we create an abundance of health globally.
What’s the Future of Hollywood?
Hollywood is worth billions of dollars, but what happens when you can simply speak to an AI and have it create a personalized movie, starring whoever you want?
That’s the vision for Stable Diffusion, Stability AI’s open-source, text-to-image generator. It’s a community effort to build an AI that allows anyone to create anything.
As Emad puts it: “Words go in and anything you describe comes out.”
To build Stable Diffusion, Emad and his team initially took 100,000GB of images (2 billion images), and then compressed all of that into a 2GB file that runs on your laptop or phone, without internet.
Since launching the technology last year, they’ve dramatically sped up the model, from generating a single image every 6 seconds, to generating 60 images per second. Which is essentially video.
At my private Abundance360 Summit back in March, Emad showed a 7-minute animated video called Anime Rock, Paper, Scissors that was created using Stability AI’s technology. And just in the last few weeks, we’ve seen multiple text-to-video models released, by NVIDIA and others.
So, when will you be able to create your own rendered movie in real time by simply talking to an AI? When will we be able to generate a movie live?
Emad believes we’ll see this capability this decade:
“In the next five years, I think that Ready Player One OASIS World, minus the micro-transactions, will be here.”
What we’re doing with generative AI is removing the barriers whereby any visual medium can be created instantly.
So, is Hollywood scared or excited?
Emad says that there are mixed reactions.
What’s clear is that Hollywood’s entire business model is about to be disrupted. For example, what does the process of making a film look like when you can change it using only words? Increase the lighting, make it more dramatic, replace the lead actor.
Generative AI tools like Stable Diffusion are democratizing creativity and imagination, and completely transforming how we entertain ourselves.
Why This Matters
We are truly living during the most extraordinary time ever.
As my dear friend, cofounder, and colleague Ray Kurzweil predicts...
“We will see as much progress in the decade ahead (2023 – 2033) as we have seen in the past century (1922 – 2022).”
Many people fear what’s coming.
But it’s important to realize that AI is our greatest tool for slaying grand challenges and creating global abundance.
For example, the top education and the best healthcare should all be AI-driven. And it’s worth noting that a world in which children have access to the best education and the best healthcare is a world that is more peaceful.
So, how will YOU contribute to this progress?
The next blog in our AI Series will also be based on my discussions with Emad and will explore the topic of open-source versus closed AI systems.
NOTE: I'm hosting a 4-hour Workshop on Generative AI in a few weeks for my Abundance360 Members (those who are part of my year-round Abundance360 leadership program). If you're interested in learning more about Abundance360, click here.
