Issue 36: Looking Forward to 2025

Today's issue is a little different. Penguin Random House invited Angus to share his prediction for the year ahead. Here's what's he's thinking as we set our sights on the new year.

Andy Warhol. Untitled from Sunset. 1972

 

2024 was the year of Artificial Intelligence. AI was deployed by more than 70% percent of US corporations—and an even greater percentage of US college students. Nvidia—the world’s leading AI chipmaker—shot past $3t in value, while Generative AI projected itself as a $15t contributor to the global economy. OpenAI released its “Strawberry” o1 models, predicting the imminence of Artificial General Intelligence, aka the computer that obsolesces all of us. 

 

2025 will flip this script. Schools will invest more in human creativity. Businesses will invest more in human leadership. We all will spend less time with digital technology, seeking the deeper possibilities of human interactivity.

Andy Warhol. Untitled from Sunset. 1972

This is because AI will remind us, through its uncanny failures and intractable dullardry, why smart behavior requires more than logic circuits. Logic circuits are an ancient source of intelligence; they evolved in archaic animal brains more than 500 million years ago. Yet those circuits make up only a fraction of the modern human brain. Why? 

 

Because logic requires data. And in the real world, data is in short supply. Life is volatile—and uncertain. Hence it is that our brain evolved the noncomputational powers of imagination, intuition, emotion, and commonsense. The powers that drive innovation, strategy, and antifragility, spurring entrepreneurship, purpose, and growth.

Andy Warhol. Untitled from Sunset. 1972

AI can optimize but it cannot revolutionize. In the idealized simulations of math, it is perfect. But in the chop and change of biological existence, it is fragile—and boring. Intelligence in 2025 will be more vigorous and exciting. Because it will be human.