2021 BRN Discussion, page-29447

First Convergence - Personal Computers. Winners: IBM, Apple, Compaq, Dell, Microsoft, Micron, Intel.

Second Convergence - Internet. Winners: Oracle, Cisco, Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba.

Third Convergence - AI. Winners: ????

We are on the cusp of a new era…

A “Third Convergence” is about to take shape…and usher in a new era of wealth…

To understand the magnitude of the change that’s coming to society, we first need to take a quick look back throughout technological history…

The Bigger the Change, the Bigger the Gains

Because in today’s world where everything can be had with the push of a button—whether it’s texting a friend, ordering food, or hailing an Uber …

It’s hard to comprehend just how far technology has come.

But condense, if you will, the past 50,000 years of man’s recorded history into a time span of only 50 years…

Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except that man used tools made from stone and antler.

Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves and went on to develop early forms of agriculture.

Only five years ago man learned to write and forge tools made of iron and bronze.

The mighty Roman empire fell just two years ago.

Galileo began to chart the heavens just this year.

And then just less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, Thomas Edison created a spark that would go on to illuminate the world.

Last month radio waves were sent across the Atlantic, two brothers from Ohio took flight in the first-ever man-powered aircraft, and Apollo 11 touched down on the rocky craters of the moon.

Only last week did we develop the internet, the personal computer, and the smartphone…and now with plans to send a man to Mars, today we are literally reaching for the stars.

This is a breathtaking pace that’s only going to speed up.

To the point where innovation creates ever more innovation…

And advancements in technology descend upon us with such force, one author describes it as a “roaring current”… “so powerful it overturns institutions, shifts our values and shrivels our roots.”

This incredible growth we’re witnessing in technology has a name. It’s called accelerating returns.



And when we reach the point of accelerating returns, progress “snowballs” and builds on itself.

Specifically, the progress made in a step is DOUBLE the amount of progress made in the step that came before it.

This is exactly the type of growth taking place in the real world in technological companies right now.

That’s because technology builds off each innovation that came before it.

It ensures that each new step is larger than the previous one.

It explains why a computer that could perform one trillion operations per second cost $46 million in the year 2000.

But a computer that performed eight times that many operations per second… cost just $400 by 2016.

Why a digital camera in 1976 weighed 4 pounds, cost $10,000 and only had .01 megapixels.

And today digital cameras have 1,000 times the megapixels… weigh 14 grams and cost $10…

Exponential progress explains why the smartphone in your pocket has 100,000 times the processing power of the computers that sent the first men to the moon.

And why internet adoption followed the same exponential rate of growth…

The future we’re about to enter will be absolutely incredible. It’s as if a tsunami is coming that will wash away the 21st century and bring about an era that will look nothing like the past.

With autonomous vehicles, blockchain, 5G and the Internet of Things, we’re already seeing hints of that incredible transformation today. And the rate of change is only going to accelerate.

“The bigger the change, the bigger the gains.”

If you thought companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon saw an incredible rise in their stock prices…

Just wait…

The gains are about to get bigger. A whole lot bigger.

So what lies ahead?

Right now we’re just beginning to enter the “Third Convergence”… and it’s going to be the single greatest opportunity for the “little guy” to make a fortune in the stock market.

Greater than the PC revolution…greater than the internet revolution.

And that’s because it’s going to increase efficiency on a scale we’ve never seen before and probably aren’t quite able to comprehend.

And as a result, it’s going to bring about untold wealth.

Think about how much wealth the PC and the internet created.

Well, why did they create all this wealth?

It’s because they ultimately made society more efficient.

Instead of snail mail, now we had email.

Instead of driving to the mall, now we have online shopping.

Instead of pulling your car over to find a pay phone, now we had smartphones.

The efficiency with which society was able to communicate, schedule, coordinate, and transact increased exponentially.

And with exponential increases in efficiency came exponential increases in wealth.

And now it’s happening again…

But as great as the PC and the internet were, they pale in comparison to what lies ahead in the “Third Convergence.”

Why?

Because the “Third Convergence” will redefine what is possible between man and machine, increasing our efficiency more than we dreamed possible.

With the PC revolution… we created a tool to accelerate our ideas and creativity. One man was able to increase his output using one machine. As a result, it made us 50%, maybe even a 100%, more efficient. But it represented only a one-to-one relationship between man and machine.

It was incredible for its time… but then the internet came along and completely blew that concept out of the water because it brought us a one-to-many relationship. With the internet, one man was able to multiply his efficiency by thousands of percent, increasing his output through many computers.

This is what happened with Amazon. Jeff Bezos became the richest man in the world…because he was able to reach millions of customers essentially through one computer. One man with one machine reaching many people through many computers. He leveraged the power of one-to-many.

But today, we’re entering an entirely new world where computers are going to experience an incredible transition… a whole new revolution is about to take place where they’ll go from a one-to-many to a many-to-many relationship.

This won’t just increase our efficiency 5X or 10X from where it is today, but exponentially…increasing faster and faster, to near infinity.

And as you may have guessed, it’s being made possible because of a “Convergence.”

Right now, many of the most cutting-edge technologies of the day like big data, cloud computing, 5G, virtual reality, neural networks, high-powered computer chips, and advanced algorithms are coming together or “converging,” enabling computers to talk to—and learn from other computers…where they can analyze trillions of data points to make decisions in mere nanoseconds and update themselves automatically in real time—without the need for a human operator.

This machine learning — or artificial intelligence —will change the world.

It’ll take us from a world of man-to-machine… to a world of machine-to-machine.

Many-to-many.

This is the “Third Convergence.”

And very soon, our efficiency as a society will explode and bring about the greatest era of wealth creation in human history.

And fortunately for us, we’re just at the beginning, the cusp…

To some, this may sound scary.

When some folks hear the term “artificial intelligence,” they immediately picture robots taking our jobs… even bringing about some sort of apocalypse.

These are the folks that will be left behind.

Because at its core… artificial intelligence is primarily not about robots. It’s about an extremely powerful and useful form of pattern recognition.

Computers use AI to take in a massive amount of data and interpret patterns to make extremely accurate predictions that advise humans and other computers.

And when computers can communicate and learn from each other…

All types of breakthroughs will be brought into the mainstream…

The Internet of Things, surgical robots, nanotechnology, augmented reality, 3D printing, the blockchain, quantum computers…you name it.

Already AI is helping autonomous vehicles see the road and help cars react to changing road conditions in a fraction of a second. It’s upending healthcare by enabling your smartphone to diagnose common ailments from the snap of a photo. It’s helping doctors operate on patients from miles away. It’s helping farmers predict weather patterns and increase crop yields to fight world hunger. It’s helping to maximize the efficiency of our power grid, critical infrastructure, and global supply chains…

Even Wall Street is tapping into this…

Companies like Goldman Sachs, Bridgewater, BlackRock, and Fidelity are employing AI technology to make sense of the billions of market data points created every day.

The bottom line is this…

“Smart machines” are going to make the processing and sharing of information between each other—and us—faster and easier paving the way for ever more amazing innovations we can’t even conceive of. The future applications of AI are endless…

But, unfortunately, not everyone is going to benefit equally from what’s coming, from this AI revolution, this “Third Convergence.”

On one hand, some investors will make incredible fortunes, even greater than those brought about by the PC revolution or the dot-com boom.

But, on the other hand, many are going to get left behind.

Lacking the necessary knowledge of new innovations and cutting-edge companies bringing them to the market, some investors will plunge headlong into stocks that are bound to become the Blockbusters and Sears of tomorrow.

Total duds making them little to nothing…or even losing much of their original investment.

Smart investors—those in touch with the latest advancements in science and technology…those that understand the magnitude of the “Third Convergence” will see a new future unfold changing the way we communicate, shop, work, and travel…

As this new era takes hold, we’ll see breakthrough technologies emerge and bring with them incredible opportunities to make massive gains from the most cutting-edge companies.

So where do you want to be? Left behind? Or ahead of the curve?

The coming “Third Convergence” tech investing is the best way to get rich over the next few years.

Author: Louis Navallier. https://navelliergrowth.com/about-louis/

Louis G. Navellier is Chairman and Founder of Navellier & Associates in Reno, Nevada, which manages approximately $2.5 billion in assets. Navellier also writes four investment newsletters focused on growth investing: Emerging Growth, Blue Chip Growth, Quantum Growth and Global Growth, and can frequently be seen giving his market outlook and analysis on Bloomberg, Fox News, and CNBC.