12 predictions by Vinod Khosla

TED Conference 2024

Investing legend, Vinod Khosla, presented on Day 2 at TED Conference 2024 and his content was among the best I have seen.

Here are his 12 predictions along with my notes.

#1: Expertise will be nearly free

We will have 24x7 AI doctors and tutors for the cost of their underlying computing.

#2: Most labor will be nearly free

Robots will do the labor.

#3: Computer use will grow exponentially

A billion programmers will write in human languages.

Thomas Dohmke, the CEO of GitHub, echoed this idea of 1B people able to program effectively by 2030, without computer language knowledge. His TED Talk demonstrated how this will be possible.

#4: AI will produce personalized entertainment and design

#5: Internet access in the future will be mostly by agents doing tasks on our behalf

#6: Clean, dependable electric power will be available.

Driven by fusion-powered boilers or superhot (400 Celsius plus).

Available by 2050.

#7: Cars may be displaced in cities

Fast, custom public transport will be more convenient and cheaper.

#8: We will fly faster

Mach 5 planes using sustainable fuel will go from New York to London in 90 minutes.

I spoke briefly with Vinod after his talk. He said it was in testing today with drones, which allows testing and training before human flight. That seems very positive.

#9: Resources will be plentiful

As we solve subsurface mining (within the crust of the earth)

#10: New foods and fertilizers will emerge

Synthetic food will taste better than cows.

#11: We will move from the practice (implementation) of medicine to the science of medicine

Less treatment, far more prevention.

#12: Carbon will have solutions

After Vinod, the CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund, Dr. Andrew Steer, announced a $100M grand challenge fund "AI for Climate and Nature" to apply AI to solve climate problems. The fund is open now for applications for support.

I think applying AI to climate problems is an inspiring "big idea."

Vinod shared his slides, click here.

Readers — Vinod is known for his techno-optimism. Share these predictions with your network and let me know what you are excited about and what seems impossible.

Read my TED Conference 2024 daily lessons

Show people progress is possible

Real employee ownership in a company

Saying the hard thing

Adapt to change

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Level Up Career Community: Member Spotlight

See what our community members are doing:

1. Congrats to David Cottrell for updating his role to Director, Software Development at Amazon.

2. Congrats to Jordan Cutler for his new role as Senior Software Engineer at Pinterest.

3. Kudos to Angie Thomas for identifying how taking a pause can drive higher performance and actioning with her team to take a Mental Health Day.

4. Congrats to Colin Lernell for the guest post “The Product Leadership Job Search” in Aakash Gupta’s newsletter Product Growth.

5. Thank you to Jing Zhu for sharing the benefits and ROI of the membership with 1,000+ people stating “It’s like Amazon Prime for Coaching” (great line).

6. Shoutout to Rebecca Bellamy de Robles for launching and leading the first community-led “Article Club” where members select an article to read and discuss live via Zoom (terrific idea).

7. Thank you to Parag Kulkarni, Omri Milstein, and Waqar Shaikh for joining Ethan for a day volunteering on trail with the Washington Trails Association (WTA). It was a pleasure meeting all three while doing some good to fix a problem area of a trail near Bellingham, WA in the process.

Community members — keep sharing your updates in our Slack Community and on LinkedIn. Feel free to also Slack/LinkedIn DM Jason Yoong.

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I hope this newsletter has helped you or someone you know with their career. If you want to go deeper into career growth and leadership development, consider my courses:

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Also, on May 2 (Thursday) Katrina Jones, Chief People Officer and CEO of Advancing Equity + Inclusion and I will have a fireside chat, we will discuss the business case for diverse teams followed by live audience Q&A.

Katrina and I worked together at Twitch. She taught me so much about this sensitive topic.

Together, we will explore the "selfish" case for diversity. The straightforward business reasons to recruit and retain a diverse team. Reasons that do not depend on it being the "right" thing to do, but rather that directly help you succeed in your job.

This event is open to everyone. Register to join live.

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