Abundance 360 Conference Summary - Part I

For the last few years, I have had the privilege to attend the Abundance 360 conference put on by Peter Diamandis (founder of Xprize, co-founder of Singularity University author of Abundance and Bold, never mind, just go read Wikipedia) and his fabulous team at A360. Despite being a technologist, I am not a big conference lover. There are only two conferences that I really look forward to attending. The first one creates excitement for me around my industry. It is AWS Re:Invent. The Abundance 360 conference, however, creates excitement for me around life, the human race and the future. I decided I would share some of this experience with you via this series of blog posts. 

Abundance 360 is a conference for a “highly curated group of entrepreneurs, executives, and investors committed to transforming their success into significance. It’s a 12 month long program with virtual seminars once or twice a month that culminates in a 3-day workshop in sunny LA in January of each year. It’s unusual for a conference as you have to apply to get in (really, interviews too, not just check writing). The membership is capped at ~250 and less than 1 in 10 who apply are admitted. You can learn much more about the conference here. If you decide to come, let me know and I'll save a seat for you next year!

What follows are my slightly edited notes. I apologize as these notes cannot do justice to the excitement of the live event. This blog entry will cover Day 1. In the next few weeks I’ll create posts for Day 2 and Day 3.

Day 1 Morning – Proof That We Are Living In 2019

Day 1 starts with a review of the remarkable events that have taken place in the past year. Peter calls it “Proof that we are living in 2019”. To set some context, we roll the clock back 100 years.

What was 1919 like? Here are the two biggest invention of 1919: Silica Gel and the pop-up toaster.

Meanwhile 1919 saw the end of WWI (37 million casualties) and the end of the Spanish Flu (50M dead). The 19th Amendment was signed. The first regularly scheduled passenger airline service started (Paris-London). UPS was founded. The first US Army transcontinental Motor Expedition was completed – it took 60 days. The first transatlantic flight (with stops – it took 19 days). Arguably the first Xprize (actually the Orteig Prize) – Hotelier Raymond Orteig offers $25K to the first person to fly non-stop from NY- Paris (claimed 8 years later by Charles Lindbergh)

Well what has happened in the present in the last 12 months?

The Abundance topics for 2018/2019 are broad and touch across a wide spectrum of what we do as people, corporations and governments. These are the Abundance themes for the year.

Capital Abundance

Record capital available. Capital is required for massive change.

US Venture Capital deals hit $130B. Gloval VC funding hits $207B. 308 Unicorns (private companies valued > $1B). Crowdfunding – Kickstarter $3B pledged is democratizing startup capital. If you have the idea you can find the capital, wherever you are in the world.

Health and Longevity

“The man who has his health has a thousand dreams; the man who does not has but one.”

The rise of CRISPR and Gene Therapy.  Get a CRISPR 101 education here. CRISPR has created Cocaine-Proof mice; Racehorses that have myostatin inhibition (myostatin prevents muscle growth). CRISPR allows two female mice to be the biological parents of a baby girl mouse. CRISPR removes malaria carrying capability from mosquitoes.

Of more than 50,000 genetic changes that are associated with human disease, 32,000 of them are caused by the swap one base pair for another. Cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sachs, etc. Gene therapy for Choroidermia (an eye disease that causes blindness) had a 100% cure rate in 50 trial patients. 58 other gene therapies are in Phase 3 trials.

I just ordered my own CRISPR kit from Amazon to do your own bacteria editing.

There are early stage efforts to build human replacement organs using your own stem cells.

And of course, a Chinese scientist announced the first birth of a CRISPR edited HIV resistant human baby.

Resource Abundance

The incredible rise of solar, wind and batteries is hitting the exponential curve. Agriculture is also being impacted by exponentials.

The island nation of Palau will go from 90% diesel to 100% renewable in only 18 months, by the end of 2109. Israeli battery company Storedot is making a battery for an electric car with 300 mile range – that can be fully charged in 5 minutes. Over 40% of the world’s coal power plants are running at a loss.

Urban farming is real. Low/no soil, sunlight and water. Products such as lettuce (34 liters/kg) and rice (3400 liters/kg) take incredible amounts of water. Modern technology can reduce that to 1 liter/kg. Growing produce closer to urban centers will also reduce the transportation footprint.

Just (a company) has produced a plant substitute for eggs (and soon meat). I tried the egg product and it was close. We saw a consortium win the Water Abundance Xprize, with a process to produce 2000 liters of water per day for less than 2 cents per liter using only renewable energy.

Japanese scientists have turbocharged bacteria than can break down plastic in a matter of days.

Transportation

Chinese auto manufacturer, Great Wall Motor, has announced a 150 mile range electric car for less than $10,000.

EV sales increased by 81% in the US last year, largely driven (pun intended) by the Tesla Model 3. Morgan Stanley predicts 4 out of 5 cars sold will be electric by 2050.

Waymo has driven 10 million miles of driverless cars in 25 cities and has obtained the first driverless permit from the state of California. Starship Technologies, a startup in Estonia from the founders of Skype, is building autonomous “last mile” delivery robots.

Uber is planning to demo flying taxis in 2020, and have them commercially available in 2023. To prepare for this future, a Miami developer is configuring his luxury building with skyports.

Networks and Sensors

5G will be getting real in 2019 (but not likely reaching it’s promise). Alphabet/Google announced the first commercial deal with Telekom Kenya for its Loon technology. Remember nearly half the population of the earth has no reliable internet connection (sounds like a good thing to say to your teenagers). Chinese company Linksure Network is planning a 272 satellite network to provider free WiFi anyway on earth. Launches start in 2019 and should be complete in 2026. Not to be outdone, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is planning a 4400 low orbit satellite constellation to provide better bandwidth, lower latency connection than traditional satellite. To give you a sense of magnitude, there are only 1459 active satellites of all purposes orbiting the earth today.

With the ubiquitous network, we will be able to further digitize the world with the Trillion Sensor Economy. Lidar, the chips that enable autonomous driving have dropped in cost from $75,000 on their way to $3. The University of British Columbia has introduced a new transducer that may make portable ultrasound machines sell for $100.

Robotics

Boston Dynamics famous back-flipping robot, Atlas, now can do parkour.

 OpenAI (another Musk venture) has a robot hand called Dactyl, that approaches the dexterity of the human hand. The hyperscale public cloud providers are getting in on the action with AWS Robomaker and GCP Robot platform. Alibaba has opened a robotic restaurant in Shanghai. Boston’s Spyce has a robotic chef. Fastbrick Robotics has a brick-laying robot, Hadrian X.

To avoid getting crushed by the Innovator’s Dilemma, All Nippon Airways is sponsoring the Avatar X Prize, which would dramatically cut the need for air travel.

3D Printing

GE has successfully printed the components for a functioning aircraft engine – reducing the number of parts from 855 to 12. German NOWlab has 3D printed a functioning electric motorcycle with only 15 parts.

New Story is focused on building houses in the developing world. They have teamed with ICON now have a house that can be 3D printed in 24 hours for $4,000.

Caltech has created a process for 3D printing metals at a nearly atomic scale – 150 nanometer layers (ok, that’s more like 1000 atoms, but you get the point)! How about 3D printing with collagen to create human airways (and eventually lungs)? How about a custom-fitted 3D printed Hero Arm prosthetic for less than $7,000?

VR/AR

The creation of Web 3.0 or the Spatial Web.

Massive competition for consumer headsets that are platforms, not just gadgets. Oculus Rift, Vive Focus an Vive Pro Eye. Magic Leap One (Creator Edition) finally debuts (over 2.3B in funding). Even Apple is rumored to be getting behind AR in a big way. Have you tried Kayak’s VR Travel app (available for Venice and Kathmandu)? If not, give it a go, whether you’ve visited those cities for real or not (you need an android phone and a Daydream headset). Check out this video of a VR tour of Jerusalem – as it looked 2000 years ago. I did a much lower tech iPad version of a tour of Ancient Olympia last fall. Very, very cool.

It’s not all just fun. Walmart is using Occulus Go for training of associates. Amazon, of course, is letting you shop in VR. The US Army has ordered half a billion dollars of modified Microsoft Hololens for training. eXp Realty is a real estate firm with thousands of agents and no offices – they conduct their business on a virtual island. How about using VR exposure therapy to help people overcome their fear of heights? It appears to work!

Artificial Intelligence

“Artificial intelligence could have more profound implications for humanity than electricity or fire.” – Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google.

Once you recognize how early on we are in the era of AI, you might think Sundar is on to something. Here’s some of the evidence.

In 2017, AlphaZero, the successor to AlphaGo, showed exponential improvement through reinforced learning, totally dominating all human opponents (and beat AlphaGo, 100-0). In 2018, AlphaZero was turned onto chess and shogi, showing similar results, learning by playing itself, rather than being trained by masters.

The AI powered Google Assistant is now available in one billion devices worldwide (including phones); Amazon Alexa is in 100M devices. If you have Google Assistant headphones, you can now do real-time translation of over 40 languages. And I’m sure you’ve seen the demonstration of Google Duplex at Google I/O 2018. I find it way cooler than creepy – some feel the reverse. There are now 9 cashier-less open Amazon Go stores (including 3 in Chicago – take that NY and SF!) with 3000 more to come by 2021.

Chatbots have become more prevalent in many companies, but a true human-like experience is still out of reach (how fast can you hit “0” to talk to a human). Ava, brought to you by Autodesk, Soul Machines and IBM Watson is getting closer. 

China’s state news agency, Xinhua, has introduced an AI newscaster, which (who?) leverages AI to bring human-like qualities to a news broadcast. China is investing greatly in AI with the most valuable AI startup (Sensetime, valued at > $4.5B) and 13 other companies valued over $1B. 48% of all AI startup equity funding is happening in China. More on China later.

AI platform LawGeex went head to head with human lawyers on NDA contract reviews.  The AI won. AI powered biometrics are coming to the airport (not soon enough!). Snapchat and Amazon are teaming to generate a buying link from a simple photo of an item. Christie’s auctioned off its first AI created painting – for $432,500!

Physics and Space

Astronomers have seen light from just after the Big Bang, 13.6B years ago. Scientists have measured the pressure on a proton (and it’s greater than that of a neutron star). New Horizons have taken photographs of the farthest away object ever – Ultima Thule out in the Kuiper Belt, 4.1B miles away.

Japan landed a rover on asteroid Ryugu and will bring back samples. Mars most definitively has ice (650 cubic miles of it). China landed its Change’E-4 spacecraft on the dark side of the moon (although we know Pink Floyd was there first). NASA has award lunar transportation contracts to 9 companies. SpaceX launched 19 rockets in 2018. Blue Origin piloted their new rocket and won a $500M government contract (If Musk is Tony Stark, I’m not sure who Bezos is supposed to be). In the first US manned space flight since the shuttle retired, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip2 achieved space in Dec 2018.

“There has never been a more exciting time to be alive (except maybe next year)” – Peter Diamandis

Whew! That was a heck of a morning. Now we jump to:

China & Technology: Going From Deceptive to Disruptive

Why China? Ignore politics. It’s the availability of scientists, engineers, capital and data. And a government pushing to win the “Space Race of the 21st Century” – AI.

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee – CEO of Sinovation Ventures, a $1.7B VC firm. He is former president of Google China and has worked at Microsoft, Apple and SGI.

Four waves of AI applications:

·      1998 – Wave 1: Internet AI – Amazon, Google, Facebook

·      2004 – Wave 2: Business AI – Palantir, IBM Watson, Element AI

·      2011 – Wave 3: Perception AI (digitizing the physical world) – Amazon Echo, Face++

·      2015 – Wave 4: Autonomous AI – Tesla, Uber, Waymo

A Chinese company, Yongqianbao, is making loans based on your phone – What apps do you have installed? What apps do you use? How much do you use your phone? How fast do you type your name? How often do you charge? Based on this information, they disposition the loan. To date, they are running 3% default rate.

Five premises of successful AI: 1) Massive Data 2) Accurate, objective tagging 3) Single domain 4) Computation Power 5) AI Experts. While US has historically led with AI scientists and research, the phase is changing. China is taking advantage of 1) Small # of AI breakthroughs and they are easy to apply 2) AI is entering the implementation era (from research driven + expert is king to application driven and data is king) 3) AI platforms + openness lowers barriers to entry (TensorFlow, AWS, GCP, PyTorch, GitHub)

The virtuous circle of bigger population, less entrenched market players, more data, more revenue, better models is a key advantage for China. China mobile payments ($18.8 trillion) has exceeded GDP ($12.9 trillion). This payment economy is a real friction reducer for the market. Chinese government support with industry is also a plus. They are building new highways in Zhejiang with sensors that will make autonomous driving safer faster. A new city, Xiong’an is building a city of two layers – top layer of parks for pedestrians, bottom layer for transportation. There are parallels to Eisenhower’s push around the Interstate Highway system in the 1950’s.

There are of course many challenges brought forth by AI. Privacy, Security, Bias from data/algorithms, Giant Dominance, Wealth Inequality and Job Displacement. On the last topic of job displacement, Dr Lee believes that looking at the one dimension of our repetitive or automatable tasks are is not sufficient. He introduces a second dimension of the compassion needed to do a job – so things like elderly caretaker, teachers and tour guides may not be as easily replaceable as some me fear. For much more, read Dr. Lee’s book AI Superpowers

David Li – Director of Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab – huge champion of open source. Shenzhen is known as the Silicon Valley of hardware. They city of Shenzhen has the companies that produce 70% of the mobile phone manufactures (basically, everyone but Apple and Samsung). The growth was not driven just by serving the west – but by serving the rest, sometimes leveraging the disregard for IP laws (e.g. region free DVD players in the 90’s and 00’s). Big companies focused on flagship high end. Little Chinese companies can focus on niches. In 2007, Forbes cover story was on Nokia – “Can anyone catch the cell phone king?”

Technology is commoditized. Anything you want to produce is already done in Shenzhen. Anker started 5 years ago with $100K investment. It is now a $1.2B company. The abundance of global resources lets us solve local problems.

Wow, what a day…

Come back in a week or so for the day 2 write-up.