Futurology

Most people have the vague sense that we’ll all be flying around on starships in a hundred years, colonizing the planets and the stars. Or… Or… even if they’re not sure what we’ll be doing, they’re certain that technology will have advanced so much that life will be very different for human beings.

I don’t believe so. And yet, I seem to be one of a very few.

I want to create a discourse about realistic futurism. I think it’s important. That’s why I’m launching Ghost of Carnot, a platform for sharing thoughts and exchanging ideas on realistic futurism.

Read more on Substack.

"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.

When we start talking about the future, our minds move quickly into the fictional and fantastical, or, oddly, along a different axis, towards “dystopian” or “utopian”.

Never do we consider “futuristic” to just mean in the future without any big change. Life in the future that’s kind of like life now. And — dare I say it — with each passing year, life just like in the past.

All of this is to say we clearly have biases about the future. And before we can engage in a meaningful discussion about realistic futurism, we need to address them.

Read more here on the Ghost of Carnot Substack.

Guess what AI workers never need? High wages, health care, pension contributions, breaks or vacations.

Once corporations start seeing AI and humans as interchangeable workers - no surprises for which type they'll be trying to get rid of as soon as possible.

I hope we're going to see massive deflation in drug prices from all the cost savings, and bumper profits this will give them.

Why Moderna Merged Its Tech and HR Departments

archive.ph version of WSJ article

"According to the New York Federal Reserve, labor conditions for recent college graduates have “deteriorated noticeably” in the past few months, and the unemployment rate now stands at an unusually high 5.8 percent. Even newly minted M.B.A.s from elite programs are struggling to find work."

The NYFR says it doesn't know what is causing the decline, but many wonder if it's AI. In particular as AI is so good at doing the entry-level tasks college grads would be employed to do.

Humans are terrible about dealing with disaster, until the very last minute (Covid in March 2020 was a good illustration of this). However, they are often surprisingly good at 'keeping calm, and carrying on' when they are forced to act. March 2020 also illustrates this.

So far AI/robotics and job replacement is a topic our political class (and their inept economic advisors) have ignored - but for how much longer?

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?

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.

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.

Switching Chinese factory jobs to America has been in the news a lot lately. Many people have pointed out it doesn't make much sense. Do Americans really want sweatshop-wage jobs making sneakers?

Another reason it doesn't make sense is that China is dumping those jobs anyway - replacing the humans with robots. The numbers are startling. If the trends of the last ten years continue, China will be creating 1 million industrial robots by 2029. By 2032, it will be creating more industrial robots, than there were new human jobs in the US in 2024. Robots may even be adopted on an s-curve, and be adopted in far higher numbers sooner.

Where is this heading? Will the robots keep the aging Chinese population economically afloat? Will using humans in factories instead of robots in the US be seen as a noble alternative to the socialism of UBI?

Source: Rise of China's Robotics Industry: from Manufacturing Arms to Embodied AI

NASA's plans are up in the air once again. The latest plans, yet to be approved by Congress, seek to ditch the SLS/Artemis plans for the Moon, and instead focus on sending people to Mars. That suits SpaceX's agenda, and would send NASA's money their way.

This will make it certain the first human base on the Moon will be Chinese. That is planned for the early 2030's and in recent days the Chinese have spoken more about its location. They are mapping the lunar south pole for water, but still haven't found the ideal spot, but that the 2026 Chang'e-7 mission might narrow it down further.