A Short Update from China and My New Video on The AI Age

A couple more weeks of unusual travel for the book before I get back into a more normal rhythm of essays and virtual meetings of our members

Greetings from the other side of the planet in inner China, which is more than just geographically distant, but technologically separate too.

I’m writing this from Chengdu, which is a huge city of more than 20 million in the Sichuan plain that is the gateway to the Himalayan mountains. I first visited this city 35 years ago on my way to Tibet when the population was only about 2 million. Since then it has grown into one of the biggest cities in China.

There’s much more to say about all of this, and what I am finding on my current China trip, but I wanted to get this relatively short post out to give an update on what I’ve been doing recently and why you have not heard as much as usual from me.

I also wanted to encourage all of you to watch the 10-minute video embedded above that just came out from the same folks at Freethink Media who also created the 15-minute viral video interview of me this summer that has now surpassed 1,300,000 views and counting on Youtube. People all over the world are loving that video and many are becoming subscribers here in Substack because of it.

This new video is cut from the same 3-hour interview that Freethink did with me in the summer and that they seem to want to dole out in smaller chunks (which means we may expect more to come). This new video does not have the level of info-graphics and overlaid video clips as the original video did, but it is still extremely well-done.

I lay out my take on the historic ramifications of the arrival of The AI Age and why this is such a big deal. We’re hearing a lot more in the media about whether the hype surrounding AI is overblown and this short video is a good reminder of the case that the impact of AI is still actually underestimated. If you need to bolster your own sense of its importance, check the video out.

We’ve now grown to 15,000 subscribers, and more come in each day, so some of you may not have seen the first video that went viral a couple months ago so I embed that one just below too. Freethink used very similar titles and common imagery so don’t be confused. The one at the top of the piece is the new one, and the one just below came out two months ago.

Some updates on what to expect in the coming weeks and into the fall

I spent the last couple weeks of August on a much-needed vacation with my wife in Europe, but since part of that time was in Berlin, I was partly doing some work on the book too.

I’m now in China, with the plan to spent time in four key regions: around Hong Kong, Chengdu, Beijing and Shanghai. I’m always crossing the country on high-speed trains in order to take in as much as possible from on the ground.

I’m planning to get out a substantial essay on my initial observations on China when I return, scheduled to be published on October 7th, as well as be syndicated through Freethink on the web.

Writing such a piece is really not practical to do so from China itself. Many of the technological tools that I routinely use can’t be accessed from here (including AI) and I still have much travel ahead. Best to write my thoughts up when I return to my base in San Francisco.

At the very end of this China trip I will be traveling back to Eastern Europe to give a keynote to a conference in Lithuania on the Baltic Sea. I wanted to check in with folks there and get some better insights on Russia for the book too.

I’m going to be writing a book with the same title as this series: The Great Progression: 2025 to 2050. Any book that’s looking ahead into the next 25 years will certainly have to deal with the impact of China, but also with other key geopolitical nodes, like Europe and Russia. I’m doing the best I can to take in more before I turn to the deep writing.

We’ll also have to wait until I return to hold our next virtual meeting on Zoom for the paid members, now scheduled for Thursday October 2nd. We missed the August meeting given the summer vacation. And the September one proved impossible given all the foreign travel for the book research.

A significant segment of our 15,000 subscribers have opted to become paying members to support this work. I am grateful for the support but I also really look forward to our monthly meetings to hear from many of you and get your insights on what’s really going on.

When I return we will be back on the regular pattern of our monthly meetings, and I want to get the member Chat more consistent and vibrant. I have one of our members who volunteered to get that working better when I return too.

For now, goodbye from China. My time so far has bolstered my initial thoughts that there is much more positive potential about what can be done to align the great strengths of China with those of America going forward in the next 25 years. But that story will take some time to tell and now I need to keep reporting.