First published in Apr 2024 on LI

I think somewhere in the cacophony coming out of Valley on the “impending” AGI that will allegedly unleash a remarkable productivity growth (trillions as per hype factory of BCGs of the world), the actual real issue which gets completely missed and ignored due to this “artificial optimism” is the cataclysmic upheaval that the Societies are about to witness.

While the euphoric chants of AGI are fundamentally incorrect due to nuanced misunderstanding between Language and Intelligence, the clash of two equally potent trends that is going to have significant impact on our societies is glaringly overlooked.

Language does not equate to Intelligence, but language is one of the fundamental fabric of our collaborative life. Mimicking Language won’t lead to Intelligence but it will lead to lot of our work getting automated and rid of human intervention.

So at a time when coding (software , applied AI) and other knowledge based jobs are going away from humans to largely machines, our young generation is ironically and mistakably more focusing on computer science education.

This all happening at a time when the second biggest trend underway is our world society staring at an Energy Crisis in near future.

There is a close to 5B ppl that live around a straight line drawn from Turkey to Jakarta. And all of them are moving upwards in the Human Development Index. Billions of ppl are now suddenly going to have the purchasing capacity to buy refrigerators , cars , AC, all of that needing more energy.

The Problem?

We don’t have that much Energy to support it.

So the society is faced with two upcoming challenges:

• See a young generation enter an industry that won’t need their talent with countless ppl devoid of jobs.

• See an industry screaming of wanting ppl for an impendng Energy Crisis but we have rarely any talent left to go there.

More AI and EV hype -> More Compute/Manufacturing Need-> More Energy to run that , only further exacerbate it.

So one side there will be lack of jobs in areas where ppl are educating themselves, on the other side, more expensive physical goods and services will become to afford due to energy prices going over the roof.

We will witness all forms of fossil fuels first break the sky leading to more hardship for poor around the world.

Nations and societies that forsee the clash of these two trends correctly, will have an edge in crafting the right policies to steer and guide their nation in the right direction of future than present.

Those nations will succeed. Others will fall behind and start to flounder.

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