There are now just two numbers that will forever shape the quality of your life and that of your kids and grandkids. You’ll find them below.
The First Number
1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F): Once the Earth’s surface temperature rises 1.5 degrees C above what it was at the dawn of the industrial era in the 1800s, the planet will pass a point of no return and become forever hotter and more dangerous for humans.
I call this point the Climatic Singularity. How close is it?
According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
• human-induced warming has already reached about 1.0 degrees C (1.8 degrees F), and if nothing significant is done about the situation,
• we will cross the climatic point of no return in less than 2 decades – in the year 2040.
The Second Number
51 percent. Once the development of new Artificial Intelligence machines enables them to take on a majority of all workplace tasks, working men and women will pass a point of no return and become forever more discounted and dismissed by employers.
This point is called the Technological Singularity. How close is it?
According to Oxford University researchers who studied U.S. Federal Reserve data,
• intelligent machines can already perform 47 percent of human work tasks, while other researchers in the technology field predict
• we will pass through the technological point of no return in less than 2 decades – in the year 2040.
What Does The Year 2040 Mean for All of Us?
When those two numbers and the Singularities they define intersect in the year 2040, life as we have known it will be forever disrupted and degraded. No one will escape the damage; it will be a universal trauma of catastrophic proportions.
On the other hand, if we act now – if we take steps to remediate our home planet and prepare for the arrival of super intelligent machines – we can avoid the devastation of the intersection and instead establish a new era that offers, for the first time in human history, Unconditional Actualization for All.
Food for Action,
Peter
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