Survive until 2035

My parents are growing older.

When you’re young, you don’t think about this much.

You think your parents are invincible. You think they will live forever.

But on a family holiday recently, I looked at my mum, and I looked at my dad, and it really hit me.

Maybe we don’t have forever.

The shape of their face has started to change; their hair looks different, their eyes are different.

They’re entering that phase of life where things start to break.

Put down your phone for a second and look at your parents.

And I mean really, truly look. You’ll start to see it too.

They’ll walk when they previously might have run. They’ll complain about their knees, they’ll fall asleep after dinner and take the elevator in place of the stairs.

They’ll get embarrassed when a stranger offers them a seat on the train.

They’ll act as if everything is the same, but you’ll see that it’s not.

This is a natural part of life. It sucks, but almost every adult human who has ever lived has watched their parents grow old.

It is the slow motion, inevitable decline of the human machine.

But what if it doesn’t have to be this way?

The Ticking Clock

People are used to thinking in terms of decades. But I don’t think decades are the right measure anymore.

Massive, societal-level change is happening and it’s starting right now.

And almost no one in the real world is even remotely aware of it.

But the experts have been shouting about it for quite a while.

Shane Legg (co-founder of DeepMind) predicting AGI by 2028

It’s not just Shane Legg though, all of the major AI founders are telling us AGI will be here incredibly soon.

Demis Hassabis: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we approached AGI in the next few years... It’s going to be 10 times bigger than the Industrial Revolution—and 10 times faster.”

Dario Amodei: “I’m more confident than I’ve ever been... we may be two to three years away from AI systems being better than humans.”

Elon Musk: “I think we’ll hit AGI in ‘26... By 2030, AI will probably be smarter than the sum of all humans.”

Even if you are super sceptical, look back to ONE year ago.

Look at the improvements in language, maths, and video.

The trend is clear.

Very soon we will have artificial intelligences that are equal to the smartest humans on the planet.

And from there… well, who knows?

Do we enter a rapid takeoff scenario and before we know it we’re living with another form of intelligence many orders of magnitude smarter than Einstein was?

Do we cure all of life’s diseases? End all human suffering? Solve all of science? Learn the secrets of the universe? Build simulations? Expand out to other galaxies and live among the stars?

Or do we all get turned into paperclips?

The Parabola is about to go parabolic, and we’re about to live through it.

Survival:

We’re very rapidly approaching the problem period

I hope more than anything that the parabola ends with us living in a utopia. I think this is the likely outcome. But the journey will not be smooth.

There will be winners. There will be losers. There will be a lifetime of change compressed into just a few football seasons. It will be here before you can blink.

Mass unemployment, social unrest, wealth taxes, asset seizures, removal of privacy and political tyranny, wars and human suffering are all things that might happen if we get this even remotely wrong.

Heck, these are things that might happen anyway even if we get this very right.

In the clip below you see Elon predicting both universal high income AND social unrest.

Elon predicting both universal high income and social unrest

It will likely be the most turbulent time in all of human history and it’s of critical importance that we figure out how to get ourselves and our families through safely to the other side.

HOW DO WE SURVIVE?

1. Biological Survival

If we believe that by 2035 all known diseases will be cured, and ageing can become reversible then you want to maximise your chances of remaining physically alive until then.

There needs to be a radical focus on preventative health.

If I die of a heart attack in 2032 because I’ve been eating McDonald’s every day, and three years later we get ASI and live forever I will have brought shame to my entire bloodline.

If you died in a stupid way 100 years ago it didn’t really matter. You were destined to die at some point anyway. If you die in a stupid way now, well that’s extra stupid because there’s a chance humans from our generation might not ever need to die.

My plan isn’t really rocket science.

It’s trying to eat healthy foods. It’s going to the gym. It’s looking both ways before I cross the road. It’s getting regular medical check ups. It’s staying away from tall ladders and angry people with weapons.

And most importantly it’s encouraging my loved ones to do the same.

2. Structural Survival

People with better mental health than me will often say Macro isn’t a thing worth worrying about because you can’t influence it.

And to that I say.. WRONG.

Anyone can radically change the future. Many individuals have done it, many times over.

But even if you can’t change the world, you can absolutely change your world.

You can do it by honestly reflecting on the environment around you, seeing things as they are, not what you wish them to be and making a plan.

Of course you can’t predict every black swan, but you can put yourself in a position to not be destroyed by one.

When I was on holiday recently I saw a DOUBLE black swan.

Step one: Secure your financial survival:

The nature of work is changing.

The economy is going to shift at the fastest pace in human history.

Companies that are slow to adapt will see themselves replaced.

Careers seen as high status today will come under severe pressure tomorrow as general intelligences start to perform at higher standards.

Your job is to ensure you financially survive during this turbulent period.

Luckily this is a pretty good time to change your financial situation, even if your career path gets rapidly displaced.

I fundamentally believe:

AI and Crypto gives anyone with an internet connection a chance to jump economic classes helping you transition into a post-AGI world.

There has never been a better time to build something than right now.

The barrier to creating a global brand or business is approaching zero.

You can just do things. You can build, you can write, you can learn anything.

You can accumulate resources, you can invest, you can bet on the future.

You must start to build wealth to you can sustain your family when the “traditional” economy starts to crumble around you.

You must be proactive, not reactive.

Step Two: Geography

Can you survive if your country does not?

Have a plan before the riots begin.

This means looking at your country’s stability. Does your government have a plan for AGI? Are they going to be in a financial position to issue UBI? Or are they going to double down on the status quo while people are setting fire to things in the streets?

Does your nation have tons of natural resources that can power the robots? Are they one of the nations building them? If not, are they friends with the nations that are? Do you have an escape plan if it all goes wrong? A second passport? Assets and family overseas?

These are all things to think deeply about now before the chaos arrives.

And this doesn’t mean sitting there catastrophising. It just means taking an honest look at the world, reviewing your options and considering sensible steps for hedging against a worst case outcome.

For example: someone living in the UK might say oh, we’ll probably be fine because we have the DeepMind team here building Gemini.

But we don’t have many natural resources, our energy prices are amongst the highest in the world and we keep on annoying all of our allies.

Therefore at some point we might run into trouble.

How can I hedge against this?

Well, you can look to Australia which has an abundance of raw materials and huge amounts of sun for solar energy generation. It’s also fairly straightforward and very quick to get a second passport there.

The same is true for Canada, minus the sun.

America is a bit harder but still possible.

Or if you’re turbo paranoid then you can move to New Zealand, build a bunker and live underground like some kind of secluded Hobbit.

If you’re not physically capable of moving then figure out how you can hold assets that are borderless and easier to move with you. If your local government decides it’s their job to “redistribute” everyones wealth because the robots took the jobs, you need an exit.

Bitcoin, physical gold, privacy coins and Stablecoins are all tools you can add to your armoury to make you more resilient to localised problems.

The Final Inning

It’s a weird place to be in – right now.

We’re standing on the precipice of the biggest change humanity has ever gone through. We are speedrunning evolution, condensing centuries into years.

The pace of change is going to blow your mind.

We will experience the highs and lows of humanity. Mass prosperity and mass suffering.

But for those that make it through, I really do believe we will look back on 2026 as one of the final moments where humans were still humans. Before we genetically altered our bodies to live forever. Before we discovered the secrets of the universe. Before we uploaded our brains to computers and zoomed off to live in a simulation somewhere.

Think about your bloodline. For millions of years, your ancestors survived the unthinkable. They ran away from Lions and slept in caves. They discovered fire and survived the Plague. They marched through world wars and famines.

But they lived. All of them did.

And because they lived, you get to witness this.

All of humanity has been leading up to this point.

We are entering the final battle.

Make it through this, and we could be the first humans to stop the clock, becoming the first children who don’t have to watch their parents grow old.

You are an inch from the finish line.

Survive until 2035.