By Bradd Libby
Technologies do not develop in a vacuum. As RethinkX’s Director of Research Adam Dorr put it in one of his videos covering topics from his book Brighter: Optimism, Progress, and the Future of Environmentalism, “disruptions are imminent in four of the foundational sectors of the global economy simultaneously: energy, transportation, food, and labor.”
But these disruptions are not just happening simultaneously, they are also happening synergystically—advances in one area often have beneficial effects on the development of other technologies, in mutually reinforcing ways.
Platform technologies
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most rapidly adopted technologies in history. A survey by CNBC recently showed that Microsoft 360 Copilot, launched about a year ago, is now being used in nearly 80% of companies surveyed.
Platform technologies like large language models are a rising tide, sweeping all into its wave of progress. Researchers at the University of Houston and Rice University (also in Houston) found that when it came to generating “creative ideas for various everyday and innovation-related problems,” “ChatGPT increased the creativity of the generated ideas compared with not using any technology or using a conventional Web search.”
AI not only boosts the creativity of human users, it also helps humanoid-form robots, flying drones, and rolling vehicles to operate more like a human would.
And AI is helping to identify sources of the materials that those machines will need. In October, the United States Geological Survey, a federal government agency devoted to assessing natural resources, announced the results of a study that used machine learning to identify a potentially large deposit of lithium—a key material in high-density batteries—spread across the southern US, from Texas to Florida.
The demand for battery materials will be enormous. Battery electric vehicles are rapidly growing in market share around the world, in the S-shaped pattern we have seen for many technology disruptions before. Elon Musk has recently stated that he believes there will be more robots than people by 2040, having the potential to disrupt essentially all labor. These are not science-fiction visions of a distant future: Unitree’s H1 walking humanoid robot is for sale right now.
Overlapping disruptions
The platform technologies underlying robots—AI, batteries, sensors, motors, and actuators—are each increasing exponentially in performance and decreasing exponentially in cost. This is opening up new market opportunities that are linking transportation with energy and with AI.
For example, cheaper, better batteries are already revolutionizing the electric vehicle industry. Lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries, which do not contain nickel, manganese, or cobalt, “made up just 6 percent of the market in 2020, they’ve now jumped to roughly 30 percent.” But LFP batteries are not just used in cars. Tesla uses them in its Powerwall 3 home energy storage system. General Motors has also launched a residential battery energy storage system, the GM Energy PowerBank (although the company does not disclose the kind of battery used). “The US-based automotive manufacturing company said its new storage system offers the option of integrating with PV systems,” which makes having a residential solar photovoltaic (PV) system more valuable.
When Adam said “disruptions are imminent in four of the foundational sectors of the global economy simultaneously,” this is what he was talking about. Humanoid robots use the batteries and AI that are also enabling autonomous cars; companies that make cars also install home battery storage systems; home battery storage is accelerating the adoption of rooftop solar PV; and cheap, plentiful electricity will power humanoid robots and the processors making the next generations of AI—all in self-reinforcing, ever-accelerating loops.
The economics of disruptions tells us that each battery produced makes the next one cheaper. And each autonomous taxi trip delivered makes the next one better. Waymo’s autonomous taxi service, which has been operating in San Francisco and Phoenix, is now available in Los Angeles too. In August, the company said it was offering 100,000 rides per week. Just a couple of months later, it says it is offering 150,000 rides per week. It does not take too many 50% increases before a niche product or service becomes a dominant one. Competitor Zoox has announced the start of robotaxi service in San Francisco and Las Vegas ‘in the coming weeks’.
Better AI and cheaper batteries are not only making autonomous taxis a reality but also other possibilities, like autonomous food delivery—which Uber Eats has started in Austin, in partnership with Avride—and pilotless helicopters.
Unlocking possibilities
The opportunities being enabled by solar PV, batteries, AI, and similar technologies are not just limited to the energy and transportation sectors themselves.
AI, in particular, is revolutionizing protein and chemical production. Google’s DeepMind division has made its Nobel Prize-winning protein structure prediction tool AlphaFold3 available for download for use by academics. Shiru’s ProteinDiscovery.ai has recently been chosen by Time magazine as one of its Best Inventions of 2024. AI tools like these are unlocking possibilities for cheaper, better-performing materials.
In Boston, Ginkgo Bioworks recently “delivered multiple microbial strains capable of producing a wide range of bio-based dyes, enabling Octarine Bio to begin scaling up its production.” And in France, precision fermentation company Ajinomoto has partnered with AMSilk to manufacture silk proteins using “local raw materials and renewable energy.” Just as we have seen home energy storage systems offered by car companies, blurring the lines between energy and transport, we are now seeing bio-manufactured silk from a food company, blurring the lines between materials and food. (In fact, Boston-based Mori is developing edible, colorless, flavorless food coatings made from silk proteins as a replacement for plastic packaging.)
Just as AI is revolutionizing material production, so is renewable energy. Engineers at MIT have developed a desalination system that adjusts its “speed to match sunlight variations, increasing output as sunshine intensifies and reducing it during cloudy moments… According to the team, the design efficiently maximizes solar energy use to produce large amounts of clean water throughout the day.”
In the southwest US, native Americans are adopting solar power as the panels situated over water canals not only produce power but also reduce “the rate of evaporation in the canal by almost 50% compared to when the canal was uncovered… The water cools underneath (the solar panels) and makes the solar panels even more power generating as well.”
Developments in any one of these areas—energy, transportation, food, and labor—are driving developments in the others. Therefore, it is impossible to understand any one sector of the global economy without also understanding the others. Reductions in cost or improvements in capability in one technology are having beneficial effects on the cost and capabilities of other technologies in a self-amplifying manner. And that is why the disruptions are imminent.
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