Plausible tomorrows
2035-2049

Vinod Khosla
April 2024

Experts extrapolate the past… and do harm whenpeople believe them!

2Entrepreneurs, with passion for a vision, invent
the future they want3

#1: expertise will be free
We will be capable of having accessible
AI-based near free tutors for every child, anddoctors for every citizen 24x74

#2: labor will be near free
We will have a billion bipedal (and other) robots
freeing humans from the servitude ofundesirable jobs, creating a larger industry than
the auto industry

5#3: computer use will grow expansively
There will be a billion+ programmers all“programming” in natural, human language,
dramatically increasing what can be done withcomputers. Computers will adapt to humans, nothumans to computers, democratizing computers6#4: AI will play a large role in entertainment & design
Music and entertainment will be plentiful, andpersonalized for you and your mood! Contentcreation would be commoditized, but not change
the celebrity-consumer relationship7#5: internet access will be mostly by agents
Most consumer access of the internet will beagents acting for consumers doing tasks andfending off marketers and bots. Tens of billions ofagents on the internet will be normal

8#6: there will be clean, dispatchable electric power
By 2050, fusion boilers will retroﬁt and replace coaland natural gas boilers reducing the need to build
whole new fusion plants. Superhot geothermal>400C is also a real alternative9

#7: cars could be displaced in cities
We could replace the majority of cars in most cities withpersonal autonomous transit as on-demand, affordable,
public transit with little public ﬁnancing. This will reduce
congestion, increase city street throughput

10#8: ﬂying will be fasterWe will have Mach 5 planes
that get us from NYC toLondon in 90 minutes – onsustainable aviation fuel,making the world closer!

11#9: resources will be plentiful
We can discover more natural
resources than we consume &prove resource doomers wrong
on lithium, cobalt, copper…

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#10: we will have new food & fertilizers
We will have much better alternate
protein production to replace
traditional animal protein, & “green”
fertilizer. And taste will far exceedthat of traditional cows!

13#11: from the practice to the science of medicine
We will be capable ofproviding precision carebased on patients’ -omics,
as well as AI models foreach individual enabling
N=1 personalized
simulation, therapeutics,
drug dosage
14#12: carbon will have solutions, if we have time
Carbon emissions could be a smaller issue
because we will get entrepreneurs to develop &scale better technologies for cement, steel,agriculture, transportation, power production,
DAC, etc.

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A few entrepreneurs, aided by policy to prevent
short termism, can make this future happen

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… things that might slow down predictions
Incumbent resistance
Politicians capitalizing on fear for personal / populist gain
Tech failures or delays
Financial market conditions may kill a good idea
Anti-tech sentiment
Luddites hijacking the would-be advocate
A few bad AI-related outcomes that get sensationalized
Left ﬁeld events
Instigators/entrepreneurs may not show up to make it happen

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Abundant, awesome, technology-based, “possibletomorrows” are likely if we allow them to happen18

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