While the media is caught up in crpytocurrency mania, the true game changing technology that investors should be focused on is artificial intelligence. From self-driving cars to Dr. Robot, AI is going to change our lives in profound ways in the near future. Russian President Vladimir Putin says, “Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russian, but for all of humankind. It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.” Many people worry about the risks like robots deciding to destroy humans like in the Terminator or the potential for huge job losses. But I love this quote from futurist Ray Kurzweil:

We have already eliminated all jobs several times in human history. How many jobs circa1900 exist today? If I were a prescient futurist in 1900, I would say, “Okay, 38% of you work on farms; 25% of you work in factories. That’s two-thirds of the population. I predict that by the year 2015, that will be 2% on farms and 9% in factories.” And everybody would go, “Oh, my God, we’re going to be out of work.” I would say, “Well, don’t worry, for every job we eliminate, we’re going to create more jobs at the top of the skill ladder.” And people would say, “What new jobs?” And I’d say, “Well, I don’t know. We haven’t invented them yet.”

China’s size advantage

Those of us in America trust that the Silicon Valley will innovate and become the AI winners; but it would be foolish to count out the China who have a huge structural advantage over the US. At 730 million, China’s online population alone is almost twice the size of America’s and more tech-savvy. Not only that, China still has room to grow as its internet penetration is still below 55%. “Mobile use in China is light years ahead of anywhere else,” says one tech player. “So you have a huge experimental lab for exciting AI applications. In China we see different consumer behaviours every day, in the US it’s a lot slower.”

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