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vision for success ideas. businessman’s perspective for future planning. Silhouette of man holding binoculars on mountain peak against bright sunlight sky background.<\/span><\/p>\n getty<\/small><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n It\u2019s the 250th<\/sup> anniversary of America, and there\u2019s a lot of attention paid to history in Boston, where we were at the epicenter of the American Revolution in 1776. But there\u2019s also a lot going on in terms of looking at the future, and the next 250 years: what will we see, in America and around the world, with AI?<\/p>\n That\u2019s part of the buzz around the America Innovates conference in San Francisco<\/u>, which happened May 16-18, with the involvement of Forbes. I went and saw a lot of what happened there, including the exhibit at Fort Mason\u2019s Gateway Pavilion, and how a lot of people attended just to see what\u2019s on the horizon in these interesting times.<\/p>\n I also facilitated a panel on American innovation, with my friend and colleague Alvin Graylin, who has his own transnational experience, Cinnamon Sipper, co-founder of Godela, and Daniel McGill from Joby Aviation.<\/p>\n I first asked Graylin to talk about the respective strengths and weaknesses of approaches to AI in both America and China.<\/p>\n \u201cThe key thing right now for America is that it has been the source of innovation for technology space for the last several decades, and it’s doing that right, but what it’s doing wrong now is that it is doing everything that it can to destroy the source and engine of that, with essentially decimating the education system, and the immigration system that brings the best minds into this country, as well as investing in research,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat China is doing very well is that it is focused on diffusion, taking technology to anywhere in the world and making it accessible, and affordable, both internally as well as to the rest of the world. What it\u2019s probably not doing well is maybe creating enough of a positive relationship with America to try to do more joint development and sharing of technology.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked him how we preserve human agency and meaning in this era.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to be able to put some constraints on ourselves in terms of how we use it, when we use it, and how much we rely on it,\u201d Graylin said, using Greek mythology as metaphor. \u201cAnd one very simple thing you could do, and also for your children, is: when you’re using AI, don’t go directly to AI for the answer. First, come up with your own answer, take that answer, feed it into AI and say, this is a question. This is what I answered. What am I missing? What could I do better? And when you use it that way, then AI actually enhances what you’re doing, and you’ll remember, you’ll learn more, versus: if you go directly to AI for the first answer, you’ll then delegate your agency.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n I asked McGill about his contributions to VTOL or vertical takeoff and landing systems, and what he thinks these systems will do in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cWe really think it’s going to revolutionize the American society, if you will,\u201d he said, referring back to the interstate highway system in Eisenhower\u2019s time, and how that changed transportation. \u201cYou think about the housing crunch we’re in now, and the affordability crisis. This will certainly allow us to expand the parameters in the geographic footprint of society in general.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked about the flying cars that we were all promised on the Jetsons, decades ago when we were kids, and from McGill\u2019s response, I could tell that we\u2019re finally pretty close.<\/p>\n \u201cA call to action, a drum I personally continue to beat,\u201d he said, \u201cis looking to both the public and private sectors to invest in this vertical infrastructure. It’s going to take federal input, it’s going to have to be a real true public-private partnership to stand up the infrastructure required to support this new mobility mode.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n I asked Sipper about the importance of training models on real-world physics.<\/p>\n \u201cToday’s AI models that we commonly use are trained on text and language, and AI trained on text data can’t build the physical world,\u201d she explained. \u201cSo, the problem that we’re focused on solving is: how do you accurately predict things like how heat transfers, how fluid flows, how structures break? And the reason that’s important is that’s what codifies physics, right? Some of the most challenging problems that humanity has to face, protein folding, turbulence modeling, and energy, will require AI models to understand and accurately model physical behaviors, and so we believe it’s an important piece to start from, in order to unlock a lot of the most challenging problems that we’re facing in society.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked Sipper about her predictions for 2050. She had a different timeline, addressed by a slogan used at Godela: 12 years of engineering in 12 minutes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt means that for everyday people, what you experience is cheaper energy, faster cures, safer products, just being able to push progress much faster and much more efficiently, is where this lands,\u201d Sipper said.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n My next question was to the whole panel, and it\u2019s something I\u2019ve been wondering about, in general.<\/p>\n People talk about the \u201cAI bubble,\u201d suggesting that a lot of this investment money is going to just go up in smoke, in a sort of global rug pull that leaves our world economy cratered. I don\u2019t know, myself. I think there may be enormous applications that are going to, if you will, \u201ctier out\u201d of the AI sector currently experiencing high levels of investment. In other words, maybe the investors are NOT totally dumb.<\/p>\n Anyway, the panelists responded.<\/p>\n \u201cI actually think that the focus on a trillion dollars is actually maybe misguided,\u201d Graylin said. \u201cEverybody wants to make the next trillion dollar company, but when we do that, we start to take focus off of what really matters, which is: what value are you bringing to society?<\/p>\n Here\u2019s more of his economic perspective:<\/p>\n \u201cTechnology is going to be a deflationary force that actually makes things cheaper, so which actually may bring margin down over time, so you may actually create more value by creating a shrinking nominal economic market,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Sipper talked about possible outcomes from simulation and modeling.<\/p>\n \u201cI think right now, a lot of engineering process is bottlenecked by the tools and developed around the tools that existed up until this point,\u201d she said. \u201cTraditional numerical simulators, I think, having AI with physics constraints baked into it, such that you can design in real time, continuously model, test, and understand how a system would perform if perturbed in one way or another, without actually even going to physically build the object, that is a reality that we believe will (drive) those great innovations.\u201d<\/p>\n Graylin went back to some of the potential issues with the current rate of change.<\/p>\n \u201cThe country is not prepared for the world that we’re creating, and if we don’t get our policy makers to create the social safety net that will give us the economic and social soft landing, we’re going to create instability that is both national and international,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Sipper talked about personal strategy:<\/p>\n \u201cGiven how much technology has changed in the last year, I feel like personally, the trend is to place a lot of my time, my free time, in spaces that I don’t believe will be quickly disrupted by technology,\u201d she said. \u201cThat means spending more time playing piano, and reading, and indulging in ideas. I think there is synergy to what we’re doing, because if you think about what it means when tools like Godela scale, it means enabling democratized access to highly technical tools.\u201d<\/p>\n McGill, for his part, was enthusiastic about federal partnership and FAA involvement, and suggested that right now, a big part of the job is getting the message out to people.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’re trying to be very logical and strategic, partnering with some of the AV companies, and thinking about these multimodal hub opportunities,\u201d he said. \u201cYou think about autonomous vehicles on the ground, and, like I said, our aircraft will be piloted, but having interconnection points in cities, which could connect you to resort destinations or other cities, airports, et cetera, and just being very thoughtful about how we kind of weave these multimodal modes together.\u201d<\/p>\n All of this contributes to thinking about how we will spend the next 5 years, the next 20 years, and yes, the next 250 years. What would the founding fathers think about AI? How does traditional thinking impact our moves forward with these technologies? Think about it \u2013 and drop me a comment.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\nNotes on Advances<\/h2>\n
The Friendly Skies<\/h2>\n
AI Learns Physics<\/h2>\n
Exploding Value<\/h2>\n