Assertion Not checkable as stated
Azhar: Studies lack adequate causal evidence that social media harms public discourse
“There's more evidence from the digital humanities, the digital social scientists to say that we don't have adequate causal evidence That social media has actually come in and soils the public sphere with quite the degree that we thought it did four or five yea…”
Prediction Open · timeframe Nov 2029
Azeem Azhar: 75% of people will use AI daily by 2029
“I think you have to be making quite a bold and, you know, heterodox claim to say that we won't all, by which I mean, 75% of us, be using these things daily in less than seven years from when ChatGPT launched, which was November the 22. And, ah, and that means …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Azhar: AI cognitive assistants will break existing corporate decision-making frameworks
“When you start to put in people using LLens in the right kind of ways as cognitive assistance, as part of a greater collective intelligence across a company's entire corpus of Codified knowledge. And also you bring people to the, to bear with their uncodified …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Azeem Azhar: AGI is not two years away
“The reason why Those might not matter is if you really believe you're two years away from AGI and AGI is only two years away from ASI. So none, none of this matters, but I, you know, I personally don't believe that, right? I think we've got, you know, kind of …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Azhar: Drone swarms will scale to tens of thousands via software
“So we start to see drone swarms of 20. Well, getting to 200 is not going to be that hard because it's now a software. Getting from 200 to 2000 is not going to be that hard. Getting from 2000 to 20,000 and so on.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Azhar predicts energy prices will steadily decline like transistor costs
“The price of energy is going to come down, and we're going to replace the way we think of energy as Something where the price jumps around based on whatever local dictator is misbehaving to something that follows the price of the transistor, which is it's cons…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Azhar: Companies ignoring AI and automation shed jobs, while adopters grow
“That the data seems to show is that companies who invest in robotics, automation, AI grow. But it's companies that don't that shed the job.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Azhar: AI and robotics will make cities food self-sustaining
“High intensity urban farming, which is fundamentally a game of data, genomics robotics and AI will for the first time since we actually had cities in from 9000 BC, allow cities to be self-sustaining in their food”
Prediction Open · timeframe Mar 2042
Azhar: Mobile data growth should reach 90,000-fold over the next 20 years
“Over the next 20 years, which is two lots of 10 years, we should, if it was, if it grew at the rate it grew over the last decade, it would grow 90,000 times, 300 squared. So if you think it's going to be less than a 90,000 fold growth, you have to have quite a…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Azhar: Corporate boards are more engaged on AI than ever before
“Having spoken to companies for many, many years is I can't remember a time where the boards and the sea level was as switched on and had as many projects in the pipeline from the technology as what I'm seeing now.”
Assertion Supported
AI optimism is 70% in China and India, 30% in US/UK
“Where 70% of people in China and India are optimistic. Only 30% optimistic about these topics in the UK and the US. They actually explicitly want to have less AI.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Azhar: Consumers won't be able to opt out of AI
“I suspect that that people won't really have a choice because their interface with the world is effectively largely mediated by private companies. So if you have an iPhone and you'll have an AI, if you me using salesforce.com for your CRM, It will have AI func…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Azeem Azhar: US will maintain and accelerate its AI lead
“So, so I think the U S will, I could be persuaded otherwise, but we'll, we'll maintain a lead and the lead ought to ought to accelerate.”
Assertion Supported
Azhar: Mistral matched GPT-4 quality far more computationally efficiently than US firms
“Mistral, which is this Parisian company has been doing some, you know, remarkable things, had done a couple, two things that I thought were really interesting. One was that they were able to get close to GPT-IV quality much more computationally efficiently tha…”
Assertion Supported
Azhar: Iranian drones costing $20,000 require $1M missile interceptors to destroy
“A 20,000 dollar Iranian drone having to be shot down by a million dollar missile intercept.”
Assertion Partly supported
Azhar: US Ticonderoga cruisers hold 90 missiles and take 3 weeks to re-arm
“A U.S. Ticonderoga class air defense cruiser has 90 missiles on board. So shoot down 90 drones, and then it has to go to a major US port to be re-armed, which will take three weeks while it's there.”
Opinion
Azhar: Meta is the weakest of the major big tech companies
“And what's true for Facebook, which is the weakest of the big tech companies is As true for Apple and Google and everyone else.”
Insight
Azhar: US antitrust law fails by focusing solely on consumer prices
“And that is where the antitrust law has fallen afoul, certainly in the U S because it was focused fundamentally on cost to consumer, but we know that there are costs that are embedded elsewhere in the system.”
Assertion Supported
Azhar: Exponential compounding cost drops extend far beyond silicon chips
“We saw those patterns in, in other areas. You saw it in, in terms of the amount of bandwidth that you could put over an optical fiber, you saw it in terms of storage densities, and we saw it in areas like genome sequencing and in areas like lithium-ion battery…”
Insight
Azhar: Giving AI software personality helps users get work done
“Having something that has a little bit of a personality absolutely helps you get your work done.”
Insight
Azhar: AI cannot be understood through corporate PowerPoint presentations
“This is not a technology that you can learn through PowerPoint that your juniors have presented to you, and you tick off. This is like the internet in 93 or 94, which unless you actually used it and started to grok what it meant, You would not be able to expla…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Azhar: AI adoption will lead traditional companies to operate like Amazon
“I suspect companies start to look a lot more like, or they'll behave more like Amazon does or more like, you know, Facebook when it was Facebook rather than Meta, which is that there's just lots of experimentation on the edges.”
Assertion Partly supported
Azhar: 80% of regional maritime traffic is rerouting around the Horn of Africa
“80% of ships that go through that region are now going around the Horn of Africa.”
Assertion Supported
Azhar: Over 90% of new US electricity capacity added was renewables
“The vast bulk, more than 90% of all the new electricity generation was brought on power in the US was renewables.”
Azeem Azhar