Think: This week, I am closing out the year with speaking engagements to the Minnesota Wild Rice Council and Indiana Farm Bureau on trends impacting the agriculture industry. For all of you in the industry, here is my annual article on the Top Farming and Agricultural Trends of 2025.
Think Again: Sal Khan, creator of Khan Academy, has now launched Khanmigo, an online tutor powered by AI. The platform is designed to help teachers be more efficient and students learn more effectively. Unlike other AI programs, it doesn’t give students the answer but gets them to think more critically. If you are a teacher or parent, I recommend watching this segment from 60 minutes about Khamigo.
Think Green:Paris is replacing 60,000 parking spaces with trees by 2030. Their motto is “Imagine that every parked car is a tree.” This is just one step in a much larger plan for how the city will deal with climate change and is a good reminder that the key to a better future is to first just imagine it, and then take the steps to create it.
Think Fast: One of the reasons the future is changing so fast is because our tools are getting exponentially more powerful. This trend will now accelerate even faster because AI is now designing the next generation of AI chips. These new chips, of course, will turn around and create the next round of chips and the acceleration will continue. As I always like to say, “Today is the slowest rate of change you and I will ever experience again.”
Think Faster: This week Google announced that they are planning to launch Project Astra, a prototype of a universal AI assistant on your phone as well as prototype glasses. This technology could help people deal with everyday challenges but it could also run into human resistance. You may recall that the early users of the original “Google Glasses” (of which I was an early beta tester) were referred to as “glassholes.” Needless to say, the original version did not become the revolutionary technology that either Google–or myself–predicted.
Google also recently revealed that its new quantum computing chip, Willow, is capable of performing a task in 5 minutes which would take the world’s fastest supercomputer 10 septillion years to complete. (Septillion is a hard number for many of us to grasp, so I have included a visual below). This is a huge leap from 2019 when Google announced that its quantum computer could complete a mathematical equation in 3 minutes, compared to 10,000 years on a supercomputer. Quantum computers are getting smarter, faster, and more accurate with real-time error correction. Exponential changes across many industries, including health care, pharmaceutical and material science are coming, and it is important to be aware of how these coming advances may impact you and your business.
Think Visually:
Afterthought: “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” Martin Luther
