Futurology Today

In an interview this week, Mark Zuckerberg said most Americans have only 3 friends, but they'd like 15. Never fear, he has a solution to how to get 5 times more friends. Meta will create AI friends for you. As it will own them, as befits the world's second largest advertising company, their primary purpose will really be to sell you stuff.

Even in an episode of 'Black Mirror', this vision of the future would rank as one of the bleaker dystopian hellscapes. It says something about how out of touch Big Tech has become with the lives of ordinary people, it never even occurred to Mark Zuckerberg how appalling this sounds to most people.

The 'Big 7' prop up the U.S. stock market, accounting for a third of its value. Their sky-high valuations rely on a 'growth' narrative—if that fades, their stocks could crash.

Google deliberately worsened search results to keep users viewing more ads, as recent research revealed. A WSJ investigation found Meta knowingly lets criminal advertisers flourish, fearing a stock drop if it cracks down.

Now, AI firms are the market's new darlings. Under similar pressure to deceive, what happens when they wield the most powerful tech ever?

Hollywood's love of dystopian sci-fi has a lot to answer for, as it has shaped many people's ideas about the future very negatively. One of the most persistent of those ideas is that robots will only be owned by the 1%, who will use them to subjugate everyone else.

Reality is shaping up to be different. Free, open-source AI is the equal of anything privately controlled. Robotics too looks like it is following a similar trajectory. The Berkeley Humanoid Lite is built with off-the-shelf and 3D-printed components and costs just $5,000.

Contrary to doomerist fantasies, with decentralized renewable energy, and open-source AI & robotics - it seems hard to believe the 1% will own everything in the future.

The new pope's choice of name was deliberate; he chose it to honor Pope Leo XIII who was Pope from 1878 - 1903. Leo XIII is famous for taking a left-wing stance on workers' rights in response to the Industrial Revolution, and calling for state pensions, social security, and other reforms rooted in social democracy.

It will be interesting to see what Pope Leo XIV calls for. Universal Basic Income? It wouldn't surprise me. The day is soon coming that humans won't be able to economically compete with ultra-cheap AI/robot-employee staffed businesses.

Some people scoff at the notion of the Catholic Church concerning itself with such things. If they do, they're underestimating the Church's vast soft power. Vatican City might be the world's smallest state, but the Catholic Church is arguably the preeminent global superpower when it comes to soft power.

There are 1.4 billion Catholics, and if the church decides to support UBI, it will have a vast reach to sway politicians in 100+ countries on almost every continent.

"The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that China’s emissions were down 1.6% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025 and by 1% in the latest 12 months."

It's possible that this is a blip, and a rise could continue. China is still using plenty of fossil fuels and recently deployed a fleet of autonomous electric mining trucks at the Yimin open-pit coal mine in Inner Mongolia. Also, China is still behind on the 2030 C02 emissions targets it pledged under the Paris Agreement.

Still, renewables growth keeps making massive gains in China. In the first quarter of 2025, China installed a total of 74.33 GW of new wind and solar capacity, bringing the cumulative installed capacity for these two sources to 1,482 GW. That is greater than the total US electricity capacity from all sources, which is at 1,324 GW.