Why? Because advanced AI technology will be quicker and better at inventing than humans.

At current rates of progress, experts predict that we will achieve Artificial Superintelligence between 2045 and 2060. Superintelligence can be defined as an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom, and social skills. 

A system more intelligent than every human brain combined, in every single way.

Where are we at the moment?

AI can defeat the best Chess and Go players with ease 100% of the time.

AI Chatbot ChatGPT recently passed high-level law, medicine, and business management exams. A qualified lawyer on your phone, kind of.

Autonomous vehicles of all kinds are currently being rolled out in the USA, Japan, and Germany, with the UK not far behind.

PathAI uses machine learning algorithms to analyse human tissue samples to make diagnoses and prescribe medical treatment.

Current AI can generate original essays and stories and create original art and music - Google it. Wild.

Not impressed?

Remember, this is 1st generation technology. AI is in its Nokia/Atari/Walkman stage. Who knows what will ChatGPT Version 100 will accomplish?

Perhaps it will single-handedly create an entire movie, just for you, from scratch.

We all thought that AI would replace low-skill and blue-collar jobs, eventually working its way up to high-skill white-collar jobs, and that the artists and visionaries would always be safe. Suddenly, AI is coming in from all angles.

And it's happening incredibly fast.

Today, computer technology progresses more in one hour than it did in its first 90 years.

If we extrapolate this level of exponential growth, we're not going to make 80 years' worth of progress in the remainder of the century. We're going to make 20,000 years worth.

Why are people so scared of AI?

In his fantastic book, The Precipice, Toby Ord explores several areas of existential risk - things that could lead to human extinction in this century. Unaligned AI is top of the list (1 in 10 chance), ahead of engineered pandemics (1 in 30), climate change (1 in 1000), nuclear war (1 in 1000) natural pandemics (1 in 10,000),  super-volcanic eruption (1 in 10,000), asteroid impact (1 in 1,000,000), and stellar explosion (1 in 1,000,000,000). These risks combined suggest that there is a 1 in 6 chance of human extinction before the end of the century.   

Most people will associate extinction via AI with dystopian science fiction movies, in which a group of tech geniuses develop robots to either serve humans or become our successors, only to be met with dire consequences (iRobot, Ex Machina etc.). This is rather far-fetched, but it makes for entertaining cinema.

Though these fictional depictions may be implausible, we shouldn't dismiss the genuine risk that AI poses to humanity.

So how is this risk likely to manifest?

I don't know. But consider this...

Imagine if Aliens had visited Earth in 100,000 BCE. They'd be pretty unimpressed by our stone tools and campfires. Now imagine they came back in 2023 - where we have Cities, aeroplanes, mobile phones and satellites. The aliens would assume that primitive life was replaced with intelligent life - but they'd be wrong. If you could pick up a baby in 2023 and use time-travel to swap it with a baby in 50,000 BCE, they'd probably both grow up and fit in as normal people - maybe as far back as 100,000 BCE, and certainly back in 10,000 BCE.

Humans haven't really changed much over the past 20,000 years. Humanity has changed significantly as a result of our collective intelligence - built on our ability to store and pass on information in the form of language. But humans - we take a long time to change naturally.

AI on the other hand, has gone from beating humans at basic games like checkers in 1992 and chess in 1997 to passing law and medical exams, driving cars, and creating original music, in less than 30 years. Talk about fast-track evolution. And it's getting faster.

Intelligence has given us God-like powers over all other species on Earth, which hasn't worked out too well for them. Anything that we can sell for profit, wear for fashion, kill for sport, or that just gets in our way has had a pretty bad time of it. Because, like it or not, all species act out of self-interest.

Now consider creating something far more intelligent than we are. Oh and by the way, no one's ever done it before - there are no experts; it's our first time. Sounds like an obvious Darwinian miscalculation.

If (when) AI does surpass humanity to become the intellectually-dominant "species" on Earth, what makes you think that we could control it or shut it off? Don't you think other species would shut us off if they could? Cue Planet of the Apes theme music.

One alarming and plausible idea is a slow transition into an AI-controlled future. As AI systems acquire an increasing share of power, an increasing amount of our collective future - our decisions and actions - are generated and optimised with inhumane values. Our future is unprecedented and unpredictable.

Even if we do manage to develop AI systems which are perfectly aligned with our values and entirely obedient to our instructions, we're still at risk. As humans have wielded more power over time, we have come pretty close to making some catastrophic errors, even when our intentions were "good". A superintelligent AI wields far more power at proportionately greater risk. 

We should also consider the risks arising from the deliberate misuse of powerful AI systems. AI systems that successfully act in accordance with the instructions or values of their operators can be aligned with and controlled by a malicious individual or group, who may choose to utilise it as a powerful weapon.

Our brains evolved at a time when things progressed very slowly, i.e. not at all within our lifetime. Therefore, it's hard to imagine the world being significantly different within our lifetime. Therefore, I think that we underestimate how quickly things could change in the coming decades. People don't seem that impressed by current AI, yet if you showed it to someone in the 80s, I'm pretty sure they'd have a heart attack.

AI is fundamentally different to anything we've ever made before, and so it should be taken extremely seriously.

Ideally, we'll create something that greatly enriches our lives and fixes all of our problems. A more bleak but equally valid outlook would portray us as a baby playing with a loaded gun. The baby can't take precautions against something it doesn't understand.

After hundreds of thousands of years at the top, we might just be living in the century where the torch gets passed on - or yanked from us. Whilst terrifying, I can't help but find it quite exciting.

A rather amusing and insightful article from The Guardian.

Reminds us of something we've been saying for a while: Young people aren't necessarily as intelligent and fluent with technology as you think. The tech is just easier to use, and you know the tech that you've grown up on.

The elderly struggle to pick up technology as it's a whole new language to them, and just like a spoken language, it's more difficult to pick up as we get older, because we lose neuroplasticity. Even with our best effort, we'll always have a distinctly foreign accent.

Gen Z knows their way around current technology, which is exceptionally refined and optimised to its core. It's designed to be easy and intuitive; so much so that it's actually quite hard to press a wrong button.

It's people in the middle of these two age groups that are generally the best equipped to deal with the full spectrum of technology that we use today. The experience gained by growing up with less intuitive operating systems gives them a greater set of skills. Firstly, they went through a structured educational process where they learned basic computing fundamentals. Then they learnt how to troubleshoot (without Google) because many systems had to be manually configured and would often crash or fail. This helped build technical problem-solving skills which are far less common today, but still apply broadly to all areas of technology.

You don't build these skills by following a bunch of colourful icons on a touch screen whilst built-in AI and algorithms fix everything behind the scenes. Thus, you get people that know what their technology does, but don't know how it works. 

This is technological evolution. We don't really need to know how to maintain and fix our cars or read maps to navigate anymore - which is great - but we do lose something valuable as technology makes it all easy for us. There's broad knowledge, skills and personal fulfilment that comes with figuring out how something works.

Founded by one man in South Korea in 1938, Samsung was originally a small trading company, dealing in local food and groceries. Starting with just 30,000 Won (£22), Lee Byung-chul dropped out of University in Japan and moved back to Korea to open his business in the city of Taegu. His core business was trading noodles and other goods produced in and around the city and exporting them to China.

Samsung is Korean for "Three Stars" which is a reference to a constellation and represents something powerful and everlasting.

After the Korean War, Samsung expanded into textiles. Lee focused intently on industrialization with the goal of helping his country redevelop after the war. The Korean government implemented protectionist policies which helped domestic corporations by providing easy access to financing and shielding them from competition.

In the late 1950s, Samsung had acquired three of Korea’s largest commercial banks as well as an insurance company, a cement company and a fertilizer company. By the 1960s Samsung had gone on to acquire several more insurance companies as well as an oil refinery, a nylon company, and a department store.

Lee's noodle shop had quickly grown and diversified into food processing, textiles, insurance, securities, and retail. But it was in the late 60's and 70's that they really hit their stride, entering the electronics and shipbuilding industries respectively.

Samsung's first electronics products were black-and-white TVs and microwaves. It just so happened, that they were better at making them than their rival Japanese firms. This led them on to manufacturing other electronics products including refrigerators and air conditioners.

At this point, Lee was the richest man in Korea.

Splitting into five groups, Samsung electronics went on to become the largest and most successful division of the Company - starting with switchboards, telephones and fax machines; specialising first in memory chips, then later in LCD panels; before really hitting their stride with consumer tech - namely mobile phones.

Samsung really struggled to compete in with mobile phone market initially. Companies like Motorola were making better quality, more popular products. In the 90's, Samsung switched their business model to focus on creating new, innovative products. That's when things took off.

Fast forward to 2012 and we see Samsung overtake Nokia to become the worlds largest mobile phone manufacturer by sales, a title they still hold to this day. 

Samsung sell somewhere in the region of 280 million smartphones per year, giving them a 22% market share, compared to Apple's 15% and Xiamoi's 14%.

Samsung is one of the most diverse companies in the world, operating in many industries and selling a huge range of products:

All-in-all, Samsung comprises around 80 companies.

Their largest company, Samsung Electronics, employs 266,673 employees across 74 countries, and generates around $245 Billion in annual revenue.

All this, from one ambitious man selling noodles in Korea.

Lee Byung-chul died in 1987. His son, Lee-Kun-hee took over as chairman until his death in 2020. His only son, Lee Jae-yong is the current chairman. Samsung spans over three generations of the Lee family.

Buy a Refurbished Samsung

In a study investigating buying behaviour patterns, participants were given two options: Regular or Premium. 80% of people bought the more expensive premium product. When the researchers added a third, cheaper option, 80% went with the regular product - assuming that it was the most fairly priced. Thus, the company lost revenue.

When comparing products, people associate higher prices with superior quality. We can justify paying a little more for the next model up. But what about the next model up after that?

Companies like Apple use a myriad of marketing strategies and tactics to maximise revenue - one of which is the price ladder.

For most people, the entry level iPad will suffice. It will do everything they need and more. The extra bells and whistles that come with the Pro models are not required for checking emails, online shopping, and watching Netflix.

Look at this line chart.

At £370, the iPad 9 64GB is a great value tablet, suitable for the vast majority of users. (We rated this as 80% useful, which is very conservative).

We estimate that 90% of people looking for a tablet will do just fine with the entry-level iPad, but perhaps around 20% of people will buy it.

Remember how people don't like going for the cheapest option? The iPad 9 looks good, but the iPad 10 is surely way better, and what's an extra £130 whilst we're here?

Well according to our (perfect and precise) chart it's 5% more useful, and 35% more expensive.

Then there's storage. What if you run out of storage? You can't add more later. Is 64GB going to be enough to last through future software updates? Apple don't make a 128GB unfortunately - better get the 256GB then. That's £180 more for something you probably won't need. Storage chips are cheap to make, by the way. Huge markup. 

But oh doesn't the iPad Air look stunning... And the iPad Pro - well, who doesn't want to be a professional? I'm a professional. Checking emails will be so much easier on an iPad Pro. Notice how people can rationalise just about anything if it's "work-related". Maybe an iPad Pro will make you more productive and creative, I don't know...

Then there's the increased sense of status we get from owning high-end products from luxury brands. We know that 44% of people who buy luxury items don't have any savings, and 25% are low income. People want to show off their goods - hence Louis Vuitton CEO, Bernard Arnault is the richest person in the world (Net worth $220 billion).

For each additional pound you spend, the relative value that you receive in exchange decreases. This is the law of diminishing returns.

It's easy to continue climbing the ladder, justifying each small price increment rung by rung, until we're perched at the top of the wall, where the view isn't really all that great.

If we start at the iPad 9, and climb all the way up to the iPad Pro, we spend 270% (£1000) more, to gain, at the most, 18% usefulness.

This is not to say that the iPad Pro is a useless, overpriced product that no rational person should buy. Some people really will benefit from the higher specs. A graphic designer or full-time content creator won't get very far with an entry level iPad. Some people actually do need a tablet that can take good photos. 

If we really push the boat out - opting for the 2TB model with Apple Pencil, Magic Keyboard and AppleCare+, we come to a grand total of £3346. I'd imagine that these are bought exclusively by the same people that fly first class everywhere without checking the price. 

You'll see this good-better-best pricing model everywhere:

Software, tickets, insurance, electronics, appliances, fashion, wine etc. (We all skip the cheapest wine on the menu)

Notice how the middle option is always "Most Popular" or "Recommended". Because only peasants get the cheapest one.

It's great having more options to fit every individuals needs and budget...

But how many times have you walked out of a shop, having spent more than you'd intended, for a premium product which you'll soon realise has no extra utility or value?

Careful on that ladder, Jim.