The Future
Surprises in the year. Looking forward to 2023. Expect the unexpected. Keep track of AI.
Surprises in the year. Looking forward to 2023.
Podcast: Mudlarking and art collecting
Looking for investment interns
This is the last time for a long while you will hear from me on Thinking Bigly: How We Die. If you are coming, do consider completing the form below although I will bring some copies to the theatre: the Google Form here.
My year in review will reflect on events that surprised me. 2021 was a regular, perhaps under-average year for surprises globally given where matters stood with the pandemic but 2022 more than made up for it with more surprises. (I’ve been ill and prepping for my show and working hard so this will be brief)
I’d have placed a <50% chance of such surprises in 2022. (Based on 2021) Going forward I judge that 2023 now also has a larger chance of surprises mostly triggered by the most surprising event, IMO, in 2022 which was AI advances.
So, the surprising events:
Advances in AI, language and art, but many other areas too.
Russia-Ukraine war
China zero COVID policy (this was not too surprising, still, I would not have predicted how strongly China pursued this)
All the Twitter stuff
Not very surprising but surprising in the details were:
Crypto fraud (but surprised it was FTX - on reflection this should not have been so surprising as no one was doing due diligence…. But then hardly any one knew no one was doing due diligence…; it will be no surprise if Binance does collapse some time. In fact very high chance of this, say >70% in 5 years)
Not surprising:
Climate policy, COP27; most/many climate science suggesting 1.5c has passed
Performing Arts no real step changes in “building back better”
Push back on ESG / Sustainable investing
Modestly surprising but within forecast error for some of the areas I track and IMO
Obesity drugs / GLP-1 real world take up
Alzheimer's positive trial (on anti beta amyloid hypothesis)
US politics
Even UK politics
Crunching of UK health system (See John Burn-Murdoch in FT on this)
IMO, at best an average year in arts and culture. Arguably below the pre-pandemic average (still not built back better and in UK funding is lower). Women’s writing, children’s writing and some non-fiction seemed strong.
So, briefly to the future.
Crystal ball gazing is one for fiction and imagination more than real world use forecasts but I think this year and for the next 5 to 10 years, we are going to see more “volatility” and “surprises” vs the expected / mid scenario. Scenarios away from the mean, perhaps even in the tail, are going to be more common.
In part this is the geopolitics, but I think a lot is going to come from the applications of the new AI technologies (and technology in general).
One small example struck me. It is now very easy to produce standard legal arguments, complaints and consultation responses even in quite some detail and outlining whatever case you want to make.
For a legal and bureaucracy system that is geared to read and respond to every case and response, very soon this current system could be overwhelmed.
Chat GPT (and its ilk) is going to augment, change or alter everything to do with creative and bureaucratic written word and image.
So far, the AI is poor at many things, but it’s brilliant at many other things. It’s especially good as a research or creative partner.
Tiny example. As a writer you might turn to a thesaurus to augment your sentence. Now you can turn to AI to augment many of your written or image thoughts. And this is only the beginning. My new advice is to train with this….
I don’t think I can comprehend how all the changes will happen at all. But, I think I have enough of a sense to think these are going to be considered some of the most humanity-changing technologies this decade, and (thinking about AI more widely) possibly this century.
The fundamental principles behind these advances seem to be more simple than I would have imagined, but could only have happened now. These are (1) enormous computing power (not available earlier as cheaply or easily) (2) Large data sets (3) Decent training algorithms / human scoring where needed (this seemingly is not too complicated).
That’s it. Expect surprises. Keep track of AI. Have a great year!
Quick hits, links end:
My investment team is looking for 12 week interns. Would suit someone with 2 - 3 years of some sort of experience (eg MBA, Masters) but open to diversity for a great person. One of our interns of 2022 now has a permanent role. Feel free to reply to me if this might be you.
Florence Evans is an art dealer, historian, curator, collector and mudlarker. This is a Guardian profile featuring Florrie and other mudlarks.
We chat on what mudlarking tell us about history ? What does art tell us about being human ?
…[what] we mustn't forget is that ultimately there's a real human connection with beauty. So conceptual art aside which serves an important purpose and helps us to think and challenges us in many ways. On the other hand, there's a human need, I think, a kind of nesting instinct to have art for the home, things of beauty to lift your spirits. I think that's really elemental. …
Florrie chats on the cultural history of mudlarking, the stories found objects represent from the both the darker side of human history such as beads and the slave trade, as well as the lighter sides of found items.
We discuss one of her favourite finds, a whole child’s shoe from the Tudor era.
We chat on what we’ve puzzled out from our river finds including a hand blown glass apothecary bottle from the 1600s.
We discuss: bottles, beads, coins, stories, Roman items, buttons and costumes and more…
We touch on her philosophy as an art collector and what art means to us as humans.
One of my happiest achievements in my career thus far was curating an exhibition on mudlarking and mudlarked art in 2019 for the Totally Thames Festival. That was an exhibition that I put on showing art by artists featuring mudlark finds, still life photographs by Hannah Smiles; a photographer of mudlarked finds and portraits of mudlarks as well that she had taken. That was in the Bargehouse which is a massive warehouse space on the South Bank by the Oxo Tower; so right by the river.
That was a joy to be asked to do that and it felt like it was a fusion of both my passion, hobby; mudlarking and what I do in work which is curate and look at art. So that was a fusion of art and mudlarking and looking at craft and elevating it to art. Looking at history and saying, "This is part of who we are as human beings. We create-- There is an impulse and an urge to make things of beauty. Even things that are utilitarian, there's beauty to be found." And that kind of links back to the philosophy of someone like William Morris who believed that art should always be useful and beautiful.
What art Florrie likes and collects and the challenge of modern art.
Florrie gives her advice on art collecting and life.
I've always done what I love and it gives me great satisfaction. You can always find your people, you can always find your niche even just by going online. It's amazing how the world opens up. As long as you are doing something that you're passionate about, you should be okay.
Podcast below or wherever you get podcasts.
Links:
My show
Did the dinos have big brains?
Models on superstar teams:
Scholarships
More fellowships:
Travel Grants for wild places
Make words that live forever
The success of TfL
Happiness is a power
Parenting doesn’t impact personality
On climate tribes: