In today’s newsletter I ask the question “Is the singularity upon us?”, Ripple just became a bank, SpaceX gets serious about becoming a cell phone company, Kimi Antonelli became the youngest Formula 1 champion in history, Bluesky saw its user traffic more than double on election night, Sergey Brin is building a 607 foot electric airship that stretches longer than 2 football fields, and an around the world cruise just ran out of gas.

Let’s get into it!

Are we close to the singularity? Has it already happened? When will it happen? What will the economic effects be when the singularity does happen? These are all good questions, and that’s why I’ve decided to jump down this rabbit hole with both feet to uncover the economics behind the singularity, whenever it happens.

Let’s get into it.

If you listen to Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, and someone I have very little confidence or faith in, he’d have you believe that humanity has entered the early stages of the technological singularity. He’s on record as saying, ever so eloquently, "We are now, like, in the singularity—this is the moment.” I’m skeptical, to say the least.

In order to unpack Sam Altman’s statement and beliefs, we need to define what the singularity actually is, and what it could mean. Merriam-Webster defines the singularity as "A hypothetical point at which human intelligence is surpassed by artificial intelligence, to such an extent that it is impossible to reverse or contain." The Cambridge Dictionary defines the singularity as "An event that some people believe will happen in the future when technology becomes much more intelligent than humans."

In layman's terms, the singularity marks the point at which machines surpass human intelligence. The concept of the singularity can be attributed to both mathematician John von Neumann and computer scientist Vernor Vinge who’s ideas on the topic taken together described an intellectual event horizon: a runaway cycle of self-improving thought, where artificial intelligence develops the ability to rewrite its own code and optimize its instructions without human intervention or permission.

To hear Sam Altman tell it, we’ve already reached the singularity, and while he does run one of the top AI companies in the world and has every reason to champion his company’s efforts to help bring about the singularity, he also has just as much of a reason to stand on top of his mountaintop and spread false prophecies. Another tech luminary, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia Jensen Huang, believes AI will match or surpass human performance on major tests by 2029. And Elon Musk, someone who’s not shy about predicting the future even if his time estimates are not always accurate, also believes we’ve already achieved the singularity, but again he and his companies SpaceX and Tesla stand to benefit from his evangelizing, so take his statements with a grain of salt.

Before I get into a runaway diatribe about our dystopian future, let’s for a minute talk about the potential pros of achieving the singularity, then I promise to rant and rave about the cons, you have my word! Proponents of the singularity argue that AI could help eradicate cancer, overcome global warming, and “free” humans from the constraints of having to work in a future where all of humanity shares in the fruits of a world where money becomes obsolete and food, clothing, and shelter are all abundant. They had me on getting rid of cancer and solving global warming, but when they get into describing a socialist state bordering on communism, you’ve lost the diehard capitalist in me, and if you’re reading this I’m guessing they lost you too.

It’s true that AI could be harnessed to try trillions of different solutions to treating and killing cancer, and AI could model solutions to global warming while still allowing humanity to generate enough electricity to power AI data centers without melting the ice caps. By some estimates, if AI were to help optimize power generation and transmission, aid in chemical manufacturing, and streamline global freight and shipping networks, that could inject $15.7 trillion dollars in GDP into the world’s economy. I think we’re all in agreement that ending cancer, saving the environment, and growing GDP around the world are all good things, and if AI can help humanity achieve that, then I’m all for it, but I’m skeptical if not a little jaded. Ok, I’m VERY jaded.

Ok, now for the cons, and let’s just say there are a few. I’m all for making processes and procedures, and life in general, more efficient, but what happens when you efficize white-collar jobs away? Wait, is that even a word? I’ll tell you what happens. White-collar jobs in the U.S. add up to around $5.4 trillion dollars out of the $12.3 trillion dollars in total wages for all workers across every single industry in the U.S. If AI gets so efficient that it makes those white-collar jobs redundant then you’re putting approximately 100 million people out of work. We’re talking about making 62% of the U.S. workforce unemployed. Try running for any elected office with that kind of a track record and it’ll make the blue tsunami that just happened look like a wave in a bathtub. It’s not unrealistic to imagine a world where AI runs rampant across every computer network unlocking encrypted files, accessing once secure servers, and gaining access to the very systems that run our infrastructure and economy. It’s already happened, when AI models being created by Anthropic and OpenAI escaped their testing environments, and hacked into other companies in order to do whatever it took for them to pass the tests their naive overseers asked them to complete. File that under “be careful what you ask for.” Now just imagine those were critical networks that keep our power grids running, or communications networks communicating. You see where I’m going with this.

The economic effects of the singularity will have far-reaching impacts on the world’s economies, and have the potential to positively, and negatively, affect the lives of every human being on planet Earth. The question is: Can the singularity be a driver of good for all humanity, or will it be wielded by billionaires and trillionaires and power hungry corrupt politicians to only make them richer and more powerful? I believe it was Uncle Ben in the Spider-Man comics that once said "With great power comes great responsibility." He might as well have been talking about the singularity.

SpaceX has chosen Qualcomm to help build their brand new terrestrial cell phone network in the U.S. using Qualcomm Dragonwing hardware to power tens of thousands of ground based stations and compete with AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. I liked the idea of Starlink Mobile better when they were just going to use satellites, but the idea of building out an entire land-based cell phone network from scratch sounds time-consuming and expensive, and that’s not what investors may want to hear.

There’s so many new movie trailers that just came out that look amazing that I couldn’t pick just one to share, so I’m just going to share all 3 that I came across. You’re welcome!

The open source social media platform Bluesky saw its user traffic more than double on election night as users flooded the decentralized platform to post about the election. Bluesky has become the home of more liberal leaning social media users after Twitter, I mean X, was acquired by Elon Musk and made a hard-right turn. According to an article on TechCrunch, Bluesky saw “daily posts and likes increased 30% and 70%, respectively.” Talk about a blue tsunami.

You know that saying "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer"? Well we’ve gotten to the point in the story where billionaires are no longer content having super cars that cost millions dollars and can go from 0-60 in under 1-second, or a superyacht that’s around 466 feet long and has both a swimming pool and a helicopter landing pad on it. Now we have Google co-founder Sergey Brin spending $250 million dollars of his estimated $234 billion dollar fortune on an insanely big 607 foot electric airship that stretches longer than 2 football fields, can travel 10,000 miles without needing a runway, and can stay airborne for 2 weeks. Yea, but does it come with free peanuts and half a glass of water?

Ripple just got permission from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to officially create the Ripple National Trust Bank. This allows Ripple to manage segregated reserves of their RLUSD stablecoin for their customers, which in turn allows their customers to use the stable point to settle Financial transactions around the world faster. This is the Holy Grail use case for cryptocurrency and finance.

It turns out a round-the-world cruise doesn’t take that long…to end abruptly due to how insanely expensive it is to fuel up a cruise ship. Villa Vie Residences suddenly dropped anchor in Cambodia stranding their 203 passengers when the cruise ship Villa Vie Odyssey couldn't afford to fill up their gas tank. The company said in a statement that they saw their expenses explode from $400,000 dollars a month to $2 million dollars thanks to sky high fuel prices, due solely to the War in Iran. You know it's bad when rich people can't afford to cruise around the world anymore.

Kimi Antonelli just won Formula One's World championship at the age of 20, the youngest ever champion to be crowned in Formula One. The crazy thing is this is only his 2nd year with the Mercedes team, and only his 5th year ever racing. And it gets even crazier, when you consider he has a rookie contract with Mercedes that pays him between $2 million dollars to $5 million dollars a year, but stands to get a bonus of up to $30 million dollars for winning Formula One's world championship. With that kind of bonus it's safe to say Kimi Antonelli won't be flying commercials or on Max Verstappen’s private jet anymore.

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.