What Comes After Artificial General Intelligence?

It’s AMA day at The Bleeding Edge…

I hope you’ll forgive the delay. But I think we’ve got an exciting issue for you today thanks to a lineup of excellent questions. I hope you’ll find it worth the wait…

As quantum computers grow more advanced, what sort of security risks do they pose for blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies?

What impact could a steady decline in the global birthrate have on energy demand… and is it more beneficial to scale back our energy consumption or scale up our energy production to proactively respond to issues of demographic determinism regarding the future population?

What plans does the new Trump administration have for the future of energy production and how does nuclear fit into the equation?

I’m long on the record for predicting that we can expect an artificial general intelligence (AGI) breakthrough by the end of 2026… but what about after that? What’s the next level of artificial intelligence, and what should we expect from this artificial superintelligence (ASI)?

It’s all in today’s AMA. So, let’s get to it…

Crypto vs. Quantum-powered Decryption?

Hi Jeff, I have a question regarding cryptocurrencies and quantum computing. While I confess that I am a neophyte with blockchain technology and the answer may be obvious, I wonder about the safety with cryptos if and when the predicted decryption ability of quantum computers comes to pass. Will any encryption be safe?

Thanks for your willingness to educate your readers with cutting-edge technology!

– Bernie G.

Hello Bernie,

This question comes up from time to time, and it’s more relevant now than ever before.

Just last December, the industry witnessed a major breakthrough when Google announced its new Willow superconducting quantum computer. I covered those latest developments in The Bleeding Edge – Google’s Quantum Breakthrough, which I recommend reading for additional context.

Not only was Google’s new in-house manufactured quantum computing semiconductor impressive with 105 quantum bits, but its breakthrough in quantum error correction also demonstrated that as Google added additional qubits to its system, the error rate declined.

This was the biggest step forward towards a fault-tolerant quantum computer in years, and it lit up the entire industry with excitement.

Of course, the industry has known that quantum computers are an inevitability. So it has been working on developing new encryption standards to protect against quantum computers.

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has led the initiative for the last 10 years to prepare for the quantum computing era.

And last year was a major year for that initiative. I wrote about those latest developments in The Bleeding Edge – Did China Crack U.S. Military-Grade Encryption? last October. Here’s what I wrote in that issue…

Quantum computing technology was the catalyst for NIST’s almost decade-long project to develop post-quantum encryption standards. We explored this previously in The Bleeding Edge – The Most Important Encryption Upgrade in 50 Years.

2024 was a big year for the industry, as NIST finalized three key standards, with a fourth expected before the end of the year:

• Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 203 – the primary standard for general encryption
• FIPS 204 – the primary standard for digital signatures
• FIPS 205 – the secondary standard for digital signatures; acts as a backup method if FIPS 204 is determined to have a weakness
• FIPS 206 (forthcoming) – also for digital signatures and identity verification.

This initiative at NIST was incredibly important, given the advancements in quantum computing. With encryption technology, we need to establish standards so that an encryption/decryption scheme will work – and tech companies can design their software and hardware to incorporate that technology.

We can expect to see some early industry product support for these new post-quantum standards by next year. In fact, cybersecurity company Cloudflare (NET) and Alphabet (GOOGL) are already using some post-quantum computing software, but it is still limited.

Changing these encryption standards to the new FIPS standards will take years. It’s an incredibly complex problem to solve because an entire industry needs to adopt the new standards – and then government and corporations need to upgrade all of their software systems, as well.

For those who understand how quickly quantum computing is advancing, there is a sense of urgency.

With that said, the NIST standards designed to defend against quantum computers are for data encryption and data communications. They aren’t specifically related to blockchain technology.

But the blockchain industry is already thinking about post-quantum encryption specifically to address the concerns that you raise.

There is even a blockchain project dedicated to this level of quantum-proof security, Quantum Resistant Ledger, or QRL.

But it is true that most blockchains in use today would be at risk if faced with a fault-tolerant quantum computer (which doesn’t exist yet). Many blockchains use something called elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) for security, which could easily be cracked by a quantum algorithm.

However, we should remember that all blockchains are software. And software can be upgraded. Blockchains can be “upgraded” to use quantum random-number generators and quantum-resistant algorithms, similar to QRL. And the new standards that have been agreed upon by NIST, may very well find their way into the blockchain industry in one form or another.

It’s not an immediate concern for the blockchain industry, but I am confident that the industry will be prepared to make those necessary upgrades in advance of a real threat.

So to answer your specific question, yes, as long as the encryption technologies have been upgraded, then data, communications, and blockchains will be safe from a cyberattack from a fault-tolerant quantum computer.

Impact of Population Decline on Energy Demand?

Jeff, your discussion of other planets and Dyson spheres are all a bit beyond me but in looking at your graph on “energy demand over time,” it occurred to me that there is another variable this graph may not take into account.

The growth in energy demand is clearly related to technology demands, but how about the demands of population. Certainly, the growth in population over the centuries has been a driver in growing energy demand.

Population decline is happening now in pretty much all developed countries. Demographers are suggesting that the world population will peak in 2050 or so and then start falling off. We might even have a population collapse.

Governments are concerned about falling birthrates but are having trouble incentivizing people (financially or otherwise) to have enough children to maintain or grow their populations (birthrate of 2.1 or greater). Children are no longer an asset as they were in agrarian societies. They are, in a sense, a liability in that they require both money and sacrifice of time and ease – something the latest generations are not that interested in, especially feminists who frequently speak of having control of their own bodies.

With all that in mind maybe energy demand will at some point start to fall due to population decline despite the increased demands from technology.

By the way, I am not a “decel.” I could be wrong about all this, but I raise it because, as a futurist, I think you should be keeping this issue in mind. It seems to be more “near future” to me than Dyson Spheres. I appreciate all your excellent insights on technology trends as they relate to investing.

– Steven T.

Hi Steven,

You’ve raised a very interesting topic. Actually, it’s two topics that are not as directly connected as we might think.

For readers who may have missed the issue Steven is referencing, we explored the topic of Dyson Spheres and how one of the keys to advancing a civilization is greater energy consumption in a special Outer Limits spotlight edition of The Bleeding Edge titled Moving Up the Kardashev Scale.

One of the greatest risks to the planet – and the future of our civilization – is, in fact, a population collapse. More than half of Earth’s population lives in countries where the birth rate is lower than the replacement rate – meaning the number of births per generation is insufficient to replace the current population.

The reality is that as developed countries become richer, birth rates decline quickly below the replacement rate for a variety of reasons like…

• Education improves as countries get richer. A higher percentage of children go on to complete their university degrees and become career-oriented.
• This naturally delays when adults decide to become parents and have children. It also tends to reduce the number of children per family.
• The cost of living tends to increase in richer countries, which means it becomes more and more expensive to raise children. This also results in fewer children per family.
• As quality of life improves in rich countries, many people just choose to focus on themselves and enjoy life as opposed to becoming parents and giving up part of their lifestyle.

And Steven, you’re right, the risk of a population collapse is a nearer future event than the creation of a real-world Dyson Sphere.

Why is a population collapse something to avoid? Well, it would result in a rapid decline in the productive workforce. We would see even more exacerbated labor shortages, often in critical service roles like doctors, physicians, law enforcement, scientists, engineers, construction, etc. It would also result in a shrinking tax base.

Social unrest, infighting, civil wars, uncontrollable crime, demographic imbalance (heavily aged population), economic decline, failing infrastructure, etc. are all likely effects of a population collapse.

There would also be a shrinking capital base to invest and build the next generation of technologies that will “make the world a better place” like nuclear fusion for energy production.

That’s why it’s so crazy that organizations like the World Economic Forum and other radical progressive factions have plans and desires for the depopulation of the world’s human resources. Not only is it pure evil, it just doesn’t make any sense at all.

An environment with increased economic activity means a larger pool of capital to invest in an abundant future. Which brings us to the importance of energy production and consumption…

Source: Energy for Growth Hub

The chart above encapsulates this issue perfectly. GDP per capita growth correlates directly with increased energy consumption per capita. Said another way, countries and societies that consume more energy become richer and have a better quality of life.

And the singular fact to understand, as demonstrated in the chart above, is that there are no low-energy, rich countries.

There is a nuance, however.

Energy consumption per capita can still increase with a declining population. And it can increase at a rate that outpaces population decline.

Just imagine how much energy per capita will increase when we’re all using powerful artificial general intelligence throughout our days and every household has at least one humanoid robot assisting with daily chores.

Current forecasts for capital expenditure spend on AI data center infrastructure projects are for $1 trillion of spend per year by 2029.

Powerful AI is critical to solving the world’s greatest challenges. It will be necessary for us to lean in and accelerate in order to build and proliferate nuclear fusion power plants to fuel the world’s electricity grids.

We can replace the use of most fossil fuels, and we need to do that by producing even more (clean) energy.

In short, total energy production, and consumption, will still increase.

We must climb the Kardashev scale to reach a world of abundance.

And while this may be counterintuitive, energy consumption will still increase despite declining birth rates.

Nuclear Progress in the New Administration?

Hi Jeff!

I am a longtime follower of yours, and I am always fascinated by your research and the stuff you uncover. As the saying goes: You have to know where to look when you go hunting. You seem to have the nose of a good hunting dog!! My concern about all of this new technology is the voracious appetite for electrical power. To my knowledge, our grid is still vulnerable to catastrophic overhead EMP attacks unless things have changed.

Given the voracious appetite for electric power, our near future requires, it seems to me that we are in need of replacing our grid with a slew of small, safe, nuclear-generating stations throughout the country.

Surely, the new and exciting Trump Administration has an eye on that problem, but I have not heard or seen anything on that issue from them. Your thoughts??

– Roger D.

Hi Roger,

You’ve raised some very valid concerns about our current state of energy production and distribution. Here is a list of our current challenges:

• Energy production is largely centralized around very large power generation plants.
• About 60% of energy production still comes from coal and natural gas in the U.S. In other countries, the use of coal is much higher. In China, for example, roughly 65% of energy production is from coal.
• Power grid is inefficient and aging infrastructure that is in need of a major upgrade, especially considering the trend towards electrification of vehicles and the use of heat pumps.
• Vulnerable to EMP attacks.
• Critical infrastructure, including power generation, has already been infiltrated by China’s state-sponsored hackers, which could cause chaos across the country.

Several things have to happen in parallel to address these problems…

• The U.S. needs to migrate away from coal towards natural gas – a much cleaner-burning fossil fuel – in the short term to keep the economy moving.
• It needs to re-open natural gas leases to make that happen.
• The nuclear power plant permitting and certification process needs to be streamlined and accelerated so that new nuclear power plants can come online faster and be economically feasible. NOTE: This can be done safely.
• There should be a national program to accelerate the development of fourth-generation nuclear power, the small modular reactors (SMR), in support of a more decentralized, resilient energy production infrastructure.
• Nuclear fusion must be prioritized for the same reasons. It may very well be an even better solution to a decentralized source of clean energy than the SMRs.

As for your specific question about the Trump administration and the plans for energy for the next four years, President Trump issued an executive order on January 20 – Unleashing American Energy.

The executive order is supportive of increased production and use of natural gas, lowering energy costs, refilling the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve, and developing nuclear power to support economic growth.

But more specifically, Chris Wright was confirmed as U.S. Secretary of Energy this Monday, and on Wednesday issued his own secretarial order to “Unleash Golden Era of American Energy Dominance.” If anyone would like to see his speech at the U.S. Department of Energy, it can be viewed here.

Wright’s secretarial order outlined the following:

• Advance Energy Addition – increase energy production and lower costs
• Unleash American Energy Innovation – this includes both advanced nuclear fission and nuclear fusion
• Return to Regular Order on LNG Exports
• Promote Affordability and Consumer choice in Appliances
• Refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR)
• Modernize America’s nuclear stockpile – this is a national security issue
• Unleash commercial nuclear power in the United States – he refers to a nuclear renaissance
• Strengthen Grid Reliability and Security
• Streamline Permitting and Identify Undue Burdens on American Energy

That’s a great list, and it speaks directly to the solutions that I outlined above. It’s all every exciting, and also very bullish for next generation nuclear power and the kind of clean energy that can power our baseload energy production 24/7. 

What’s Next After Artificial General Intelligence?

The CEO of Softbank mentioned at Trump’s news conference that after AGI there is ASI or artificial superintelligence. Did I hear that correctly? If so, please expound on this. Thank you.

– John S.

Hi John,

Yes, you did hear that correctly.

It’s going to be hard enough for the world to comprehend artificial general intelligence, let alone artificial superintelligence.

I’m predicting that we’ll see AGI within the next 18 months by at least one company. We’re already seeing some signs that the technology is emerging. It hasn’t happened yet, but we’re getting very close.

AGI will be capable of performing tasks at the level of a human expert in whatever subjects it has been trained on. It will be immensely useful and have the ability to perform self-directed research.

ASI will be capable of surpassing all human intelligence in every discipline. It will be capable of research and invention beyond the comprehension of humans. We will struggle to understand an ASI’s capabilities. My current prediction timing the development of an ASI is by 2030.

This acceleration is both exciting and daunting. And the world will both embrace these newfound “superpowers” that we’ll all enjoy being augmented by AI and also be taken aback by the sheer power and capability of this technology.

This is why I continue to provide so much research and analysis on AI to my subscribers. I hope that our community can proactively become more knowledgeable and better prepared for what’s to come, both as investors as well as individuals adapting to this new AI tech-enabled world that we find ourselves in.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Jeff