Predictions for what 2030 has in store for the world

This post is a part of the Iowa Startup Collective. If you haven't already, check out the other writers at IowaStartupCollective.Substack.com.

My name is Clayton. I’ve been early to a few technologies and late to most.

Here are my predictions for what 2030 has in store for the world.

By 2030, memory accuracy for an average person will have improved by 50%.

How do we get better at memory?

I’ll start by stating the obvious; our brains reconstruct rather than replay events. Errors can be (and likely are) introduced each time that we think about a past event.

Think about a cringe moment in your life that sometimes pops up as a shower thought.

You’re probably the only person in the world still reconstructing that moment. And whatever the latest reconstruction is, I bet it’s only 25% accurate.

There are 2 major drivers of people getting better at memory.

One of those drivers is less sugar consumption.

The average American diet has WAY TOO MUCH sugar, which is impairing their memory by 30-50%.

But this driver is going to play a small role in improving memory by 2030. Somewhere around 10%. It’ll take time to get more and more harmful ingredients out of products.

Most of the other 90% of memory improvement by 2030 will come from AI tools.

These tools will be further integrated into our everyday lives, apps, wearables, and experiences.

As we have more and more fluid conversations with these tools, they will catalog everything. They’ll always be your sidekick with a perfect memory (your memory).

It may be hard to visualize how your life will change with 50% better memory, but imagine this:

· Walking into any event, and your wearable assists you with recognizing all faces, then sharing the name and your last interaction with the person approaching you (more focus on who you’re there to see and what you need to accomplish)

· You gain more confidence from skills that normally would have taken you longer to grasp, such as playing a musical instrument or a sport (a step toward how Neo learns martial arts in The Matrix)

By 2030, people will further optimize their life and likely be happier from it. That will lead to the United States breaking into the top 10 of the World Happiness Report, for the first time ever.

Generationally speaking, the older the generation, the slower the adoption of AI tools.

In the past five years, AI adoption has grown by 5-10% YoY overall.

Baby boomers are 3-5% YoY. Today, about 1 in 5 baby boomers are utilizing AI knowingly, at least once a week.

I remember my parents being excited by the Amazon Echo I got them a decade ago, being able to ask Alexa about the weather.

Flash forward to today, and they’re talking with AI from their phone or office computer, with subjects and questions ranging from “how many more games would the St. Louis Cardinals need to win to clench the division?” to “here’s a couple photos of a wooden table I just found on FB Marketplace, and how I’d like it to look when I’m done with it. What materials do I need to go and buy to accomplish this?”

This is the interesting point in time where people who want to proactively utilize AI are. While most people believe it’s too much of an uphill learning curve, so they won’t yet.

“The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.”

But those who are embracing and learning now, will realize that accountability will be accessible, at a fraction of the cost.

Not everyone can afford a therapist or a personal trainer.

But the cost of accountability will go from hundreds or thousands of dollars a month, to under $1000 a year.

And it won’t be an app that sends you a push notification. It’ll be a voice indistinguishable from another person, checking in on you throughout each day or as often as what it and you believe are optimal.

The US will hit a 7.5 score for its top 10 debut (higher threshold, as many other countries will also adopt and optimize AI, although they’ll fall behind because of their over regulations).

By 2030, here’s where cryptocurrencies will be at.

33 US states will have focused on and proposed strategic BTC reserves. 11 of them will have been approved (don’t worry, that number will increase in the following 5 years).

BTC market cap will be about $10 trillion, which means BTC will be $500,000 per.

ETH market cap will be $1.2 trillion, which means ETH will be $10,000 per.

I’ve been saying both of these price targets openly for the past 6+ years.

Entire cryptocurrency market cap will be $20 trillion, from the tokenization of…everything

Coinbase’s regulatory capture will have it be the onramp for 70+% of Americans.

We’ll no longer be in 4-year historical cycles, due mostly to the compounding of AI and accelerated adoption. And many other reasons highlighted in this post.

By 2030, here’s where education will stand.

There will be a 40% drop in people pursuing 4-year degrees. That’s about 5 million fewer people spending 4 years on education.

Thanks to the cost of information going to $0, it’ll be easier than ever to calculate ROI on education.

Certificates and short-term programs ranging from 3 months to 24 months will be adopted by the colleges who survive the hit to their revenue.

Community colleges who are thriving from this model now, will have competition from the larger institutions.

College career path conversations will have successfully shifted from high school to middle school, with greater exposure to tech and trades (in the good high schools).

Instead of required foreign language classes, you’ll see things like AI level app creation certificates.

The teachers who care the most will improve their curriculum efficiency by 100%. That means that kids will learn double what they’re able to do today, in a given semester.

Teacher to student ratio improves as curated learning replaces standardized testing in many aspects.

By 2030, these approaches to business will be more commonly accepted and proven to be superior to many models today.

Fellowships are an alternative path to betting on young people. Imagine 1,000 more variations of the Thiel fellowship. As young adults have less pressure on 4-year schools, and earlier conversations around career paths, there will be less pressure from families to do something traditional.

Even Mikayla and I are working toward fellowships with MooneyGrants.com, and we’re just a random tech couple in Iowa.

Access to private company investing grows 5x. It was a big leap when Equity crowdfunding grew from a maximum of $1m to $5m. Those are still both arbitrary numbers.

Startups will be able to crowdfund through hundreds of other mechanisms, meaning closer-to-customer alignment, and more people starting companies.

People will start holding companies, so investors and friends can bet on them, and not necessarily just one idea or product. This will drive more people into retail investing that blurs the lines between private and public companies.

Many of these approaches will be underlined by social scoring, which I spoke about in my last blog post.

By 2030, there will be 20 Clayton Farms Salads locations.

The data will show that our average customer will expect to extend their lifespan by 2 years, thanks to having food that has double the nutrition (and flavor).

We’ll be in markets throughout the US and 2 other countries.

We’ll still be privately held, but we’ll have considered and possibly raised an equity round from among our 5 million customers we’ve farmed for.

At our flagship locations, we’ll have humanoid robots working side by side with our farmers.

I’ll still be farming and creating.