Dear Reader,
The talk this week is of the upcoming December 15 (this Sunday) deadline for the next round of U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports. If the U.S. and China don’t come to terms on a Phase 1 trade agreement this month, I doubt anything meaningful will be put in place until after next year’s U.S. presidential elections.
And after the economic numbers that I shared yesterday, the delay in an agreement, even if it takes more than a year, will not be a problem for the U.S. economy and thus the U.S. equity markets.
Better yet, as we look to 2021 and 2022, a higher-quality, more substantive agreement in the first half of 2021 would be even more bullish for the global economy.
I’m willing to hold out for a better agreement. We certainly won’t have any shortage of fantastic investment opportunities in 2020.
Now, before we turn to today’s insights, I want to remind readers about an event taking place tomorrow evening. It involves a former billion-dollar fund manager and a “trade-a-thon” aimed at delivering $70,000 to charity. I put together a short video with all the details. Catch it here.
Competition in the augmented reality (AR) industry is starting to heat up.
As a reminder, augmented reality is an immersive experience where digital images and information display on top of the user’s real-world environment.
This can be done to a lesser degree with smartphones, but AR glasses are what will bring the experience to life and provide a simple, seamless user experience.
There are quite a few big names building products in this space right now. Google has Google Glass. Microsoft has HoloLens. Private company Magic Leap has the Magic Leap One. And both Apple and Facebook are working on their own versions of AR glasses as we speak.
But these are all somewhat expensive, high-end products. The price tag limits the market for the AR glasses. What’s needed to spark the AR industry is an affordable mass-market product. And it turns out two prominent companies have a plan to do just that…
Semiconductor maker Qualcomm is teaming up with software company Niantic to make a pair of mass-market AR glasses. This may sound like an odd couple, but each company has much to gain from the partnership.
Smart Glasses Using Qualcomm Chip
Source: Qualcomm
Qualcomm’s chips will power every pair of glasses sold. As for Niantic, this is the company that made Pokémon Go – the most successful AR game in the world.
And earlier this year, Niantic released a new AR game called Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, based on the famed Harry Potter series. Niantic knows that the mass-adoption of AR glasses will lead to a massive spike in revenues from its AR games.
So this is a great move for each company. But neither one of them has plans to produce and sell these AR glasses. Instead, they have produced what’s called a reference design in the industry.
The point of a reference design is to demonstrate the product to a broad set of manufacturers.
The reference design is a fully functional model. It has clearly defined specifications and components that a manufacturer can duplicate. So the reference design takes much of the trial and error out of the design process. It’s used as a catalyst to stimulate the market.
So I expect we’ll see a prominent consumer electronics company run with this design next year. A mass-market product like this could do wonders to stimulate the AR market in 2020.
And remember, I’m on the record saying that AR glasses will be the next giant consumer electronics frenzy. Eventually, these AR glasses will replace our smartphones. This partnership will help accelerate consumer-grade, affordable AR glasses.
We have written about Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) division DeepMind before in these pages. That’s because DeepMind has made some of the most incredible advancements in the field of AI. And its most recent breakthrough could be a game changer…
DeepMind just built an AI program called Temporal Value Transport (TVT). TVT is the next generation of what’s called reinforcement learning. This is a “humanlike” form of machine learning.
Why do humans tend to get wiser with age? Because we get better at projecting the consequences of each decision we make over many years. And we get better at foreseeing how each decision will lead to a new set of circumstances. That allows us to choose the best path to follow.
Well, it’s the same with TVT. The AI is tasked with predicting the outcomes of multiple decisions over a long period of time.
As the story unfolds, the AI learns in real time and feeds the observed “long-term” consequences back into its model. This enables it to get better at projecting which decisions will lead to the best possible outcome.
This form of AI will have many important applications. It makes me think of game theory. That’s the study of the interactions that take place between sets of decision makers. This could be political negotiations, macroeconomic policy, or military operations.
Or the AI could optimize transportation networks. Think of fleets of aircraft, trains, or freight. It could also work on logistics networks or even something like school bus routes for a metropolitan area.
DeepMind’s TVT is an AI that can synthesize the equivalent of decades of wisdom within a matter of minutes. It has the potential to make mistakes, learn, iterate, improve, and ultimately optimize for the best outcome before ever trying something out in the real world.
And the bigger picture is that this model will take us one step closer to artificial general intelligence (AGI).
AGI refers to the point where a machine’s intelligence matches that of a human. It’s where a machine has a deep understanding of the world around it as well as the ability to learn and perform any task that a human can.
AGI, as with all technology, has the potential to be used for good… or evil. This is something I talked with Glenn Beck about on his podcast a couple weeks ago (catch up on my discussion with Glenn right here).
As I told Glenn, I believe the “experts” who say AGI is decades away are very wrong. My prediction is that we’ll see AGI come by 2028…
That’s right, a human level AI… but much smarter and absolutely tireless. It’s less than 10 years away. What’s important is how we use that technology when it arrives.
Let’s conclude with a story with incredible applications for health care…
Pancreatic cancer is a miserable affliction with no known cure. It is by far one of the most difficult cancers to treat. Most people who are diagnosed die within five years.
But fantastic research coming out of Tel Aviv University may offer a cure…
Researchers at Tel Aviv just demonstrated a promising treatment. They first took human pancreatic cancer cells and injected them into mice. They then injected the mice with a small molecule called PJ34 for 14 days.
A month after the treatment period, the researchers found that 90% of the cancerous cells were eradicated across the test subjects. And the tumor in one mouse disappeared entirely. That’s with just two weeks of treatment.
So this could be big. The next step is to test the treatment on pigs. Though it may not seem like it, pigs are biologically very similar to humans. That’s why pig organs can be used for human transplants.
We discussed this in The Bleeding Edge previously when I wrote about eGenesis, an exciting early stage company developing xenotransplantation technology using CRISPR genetic editing.
If the treatment works in pigs, it will move into Phase 1 clinical trials on humans. That would be great news for pancreatic cancer patients… And it could ultimately save many lives.
And this is a harbinger of a larger theme. We are going to see an explosion of therapeutic advancements in 2020 – and in the next decade, for that matter. The application of data science, AI, and machine learning on drug discovery and development is unleashing a flood of new biotech innovation.
As we’ve talked about before, unleashing an AI onto the drug discovery process will lead to new therapies being discovered in a fraction of the time.
And as I learned from my recent biotech conference at MIT, that will happen within the next two years… an AI will discover a new therapeutic compound.
Regards,
Jeff Brown
Editor, The Bleeding Edge
P.S. Another incredible biotech breakthrough is happening right before our eyes.
As regular readers know, I have been pounding the table on CRISPR genetic editing technology for four years now. As soon as I understood CRISPR, I knew it would be a game changer.
CRISPR is like software programming for DNA. It allows scientists to “cut out” harmful genetic mutations and replace them with healthy DNA.
I said from the start that this technology would ultimately cure every human disease of genetic origin. I have never wavered on that, but I also haven’t had any proof to back up my claim. Until now…
In the coming weeks, one small-cap CRISPR company will release the results of its latest human trial. And based on my boots on the ground research, I believe these results will shock the world. We are going to see this company dominate the 24-hour news cycle in the days to follow.
And of course, that will lead to massive gains. I predict shares in this small-cap stock will soar as high as 1,000% in the aftermath.
Simply put, this is a stock that needs to be in every tech investor’s portfolio right now. Please don’t let this opportunity pass by. You can get all the details right here.
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The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
