Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire A very interesting talk by Daimler Benz CEO

An interesting talk by the Managing Director of Daimler Benz, Ola Kallenius, was a bit mind blowing really. He predicted an interesting concept of what could lie ahead.



In the presentation, he said Mercedes Benz competitors are no longer other car companies except for Tesla (obvious).



Google, Apple, Amazon, 'et -al' are now the competition.

There have always been the 3 constants ... Death, Taxes and CHANGE!

Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.

Uber is just a software tool. They don't own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world.

Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.

Artificial Intelligence:
Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.

In the US, young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (for more or less basic stuff, at least for now) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. There will be 90% fewer lawyers in the future, only specialists will remain.

Watson already helps doctors in diagnosing cancer, 4 times more accurate than human nurses.

Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans.

In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

Autonomous cars:

In 2018 the first self-driving cars will appear for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don't want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver's license and will never own a car. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars for
that. We can transform former parking spaces into parks.



1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 60,000 miles (100,000 km), with autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 6 million miles (10 million km). That will save a million lives each year.



Most car companies will probably become bankrupt. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels. Many engineers from Volkswagen and Audi are completely terrified of Tesla.

Insurance companies will have massive trouble because without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighborhoods.

Electric cars will become mainstream about 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can now see the burgeoning impact.

Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. Energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that can't last. Technology will take care of that strategy.

With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination of salt water now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter (@ 0.25 cents). We don't have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost.

Health:

The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There are companies that will build a medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it. It then analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medical analysis, nearly for free.
Goodbye, medical establishment.

3D printing:

The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies have already started 3D printing shoes.



Some spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to have in the past.

At the end of this year, new smart phones will have 3D scanning
possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home.

In China, already developers have 3D printed and built a complete 6-story office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that's being produced will be 3D printed.

Business opportunities:

If you think of a niche you want to go in, ask yourself: "in the future, do you think we will have that?" and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner?

If it doesn't work with your phone, forget the idea. And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to failure in the 21st century.

Work:

70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a small time.

Agriculture:



There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field instead of working all day on their fields.

Aeroponics will need much less water. The first Petri dish produced veal, is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surface is used for cows. Imagine if we don't need that space anymore. There are several startups that will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labelled as "alternative protein source" (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

There is an app called "moodies" which can already tell in which mood you're in. By 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions, if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where it's being displayed when they're telling the truth and when they're not. Bitcoin may even become the default reserve currency. Of the world!

Longevity:

Right now, the average life span increases by 3 months per year. Four years ago, the life span used to be 79 years, now it's 80 years. The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more than one year increase per year. So we all might live for a long time, probably way more than 100.

Education:

The cheapest smart phones are already at $10 in Africa and Asia. By 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smart phone. That means, everyone has the same access to world class education.

Every child can use the free Khan academy internet programs for everything he or she needs to learn at school in First World countries. There have already been releases of software in Indonesia and soon there will be releases in Arabic, Swahili and Chinese this summer. I can see enormous potential if we give the English app for free, so that children in Africa and everywhere else can become fluent in English and that could happen within half a year.

Expect big changes in this world in the near future.

Do you have a link to this. Thanks

I will see if my Bud that emailed this to me will send it to me.

tag

Thanks

we've got the new mercedes stadium in atlanta. it'll be the site of the SEC playoff championship on saturday, etc. all one has to do is fight one's way through the neighborhoods to get there, and back out. strange what outcomes that big money can cause to occur.

i'm surprised he didn't mention the emergence of fast-trains. maybe he's not invested in them?

tag

Lyft, Uber, et. al. will obviate the need for mass transit, including fast trains.

RS

I think some skepticism is in order. Like, is the Whole Foods crowd really going to buy petri-dish veal?

The Guy is a visionary I tell you LMFAO. I started out in IT over 30 years ago and the IBM midrange computer I worked on had 512 MB of memory..It took up a small room to run. Think about that for a second. That CEO is just stating the obvious.

Here you go:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/interesting-talk-md-daimler-benz-jonathan-brathwaite

This is an interesting talk about the future of solar energy.

https://www.wimp.com/ramez-naam-on-the-future-of-energy/

I second this. .......... Something to think about: the average person today with their "smart phone" has more " computer power"
than the astronauts had when they went to the moon and back. Scary isn't it!! Cheers NC

I agree with some of it, I think other bits will be off the mark. The biggest miss is ignoring the human factor.

While on the one hand every industry and service sector us moving towards less employees that are more highly skilled, our society and education system is putting out people that are less mentally capable and motivated. Think about it, the smartphone may have more computing power than a Saturn V rocket, but the average smart phone user can't complete a sentence. Their communication consists of taking a picture of themselves with a fragmented sentence that would have incorrectly spelled words if not for auto-correct.

Color me skeptical on the green energy revolution. When alternative energy is significantly cheaper than petro based energy, then it will make the switch. The trends I see in the energy sector is for lower cost oil for the foreseeable future and technology reducing the cost of producing oil keeping those costs down as well.

He may be on the mark for urban dwellers regarding vehicles, I think folks further away from urban centers might tend to stick with traditional vehicles.

Most of all, with all those jobs disappearing, what happens with those people? Might that lead to some sort of revolution or giant wrench in the monkey works? The one constant with areas subject to civil unrest the world over is high unemployment rates. When you have large numbers of people with limited skills or skills that are no longer needed, those aren't the people that are going to be filling the slots available to highly skilled specialists.

He forgot to mention that AI will kill us all...

Excellent. Thanks

What does "MD" of Daimler Benz mean?

That is very interesting

Likely Managing Director.

There is more truth than speculation in 75% of that article. The remaining 25% that may or may not occur can have a tremendous impact on the other 75% though. That being said, the opportunities are limitless and fascinating.

Not a mondkey wrench in the works, Shoes in the mechanism! Sabotage.

There is a point where this "brave new world" will have to accomodate the masses. and someone will have to build the cell phones, erect the towers, troubleshoot the software, on and on.