Clues You Must Watch Out For

By Jaffa Levy

Technological change is not inching forward — it is rushing down the rail tracks like an express train. These are the clues you must watch carefully, whether you are an investor, a worker, or simply someone trying to plan for the future. They may help you understand what is coming — and how soon it may arrive.

Reading the Zeitgeist

How do you understand the zeitgeist? How do you make sense of the fog of the future? You start by knowing what signs to watch out for. The future rarely announces itself with certainty, but it does leave clues — markers that tell us where change is gathering speed.

Here are some of the signs I am watching closely. They may look like separate developments, but together they form the tracks on which the express trains of convergence are already running.

The First Clue: AI at the Center

Artificial intelligence is not just another tool in the digital arsenal; it is the core driver of nearly everything else. Think of it less as a standalone technology and more as the electricity of our time — woven into robotics, vehicles, medicine, communications, and finance.

Where AI takes hold, costs collapse, productivity soars, and incumbents stumble. The rise of autonomous taxi platforms illustrates this: cars as robots, powered by batteries, guided by AI. If you want to know what tomorrow looks like, watch how quickly AI seeps into every industry.

The Second Clue: The Law of Cost Collapse

Most people know Moore’s Law — the rule of thumb that chips double in power every two years. But the real engine today is Wright’s Law: with each doubling of production, costs fall at a predictable rate.

This is why industrial robots become 50% cheaper every time output doubles. Why electric vehicle batteries fall in cost by 28%. Why DNA sequencing — once billions of dollars per genome — now costs just a few hundred. And why training large AI models is getting 70% cheaper every single year.

The consequence? The things that look prohibitively expensive today may be trivial costs tomorrow.

The Third Clue: Deflation in Disguise

You are told to fear inflation. You see wage negotiations at car plants or airports and assume higher prices are permanent. But the real story may be the opposite.

There are two faces of deflation:

• Bad deflation is when companies fail to adapt and wages destroy margins. Auto giants or airlines that cannot change may crumble under their own weight.
• Good deflation comes from learning curves. Costs collapse, prices fall, adoption soars. This is the deflation of abundance, not of collapse.

For the investor, consumer, or policymaker, the question is: which kind of deflation are you exposed to?

The Fourth Clue: GDP Growth May Accelerate, Not Slow

History offers a lesson. From 1500 to 1900, world GDP inched forward at just 0.6% a year. Then came electricity, the combustion engine, and the telephone. Growth shot to 3%.

Consensus today assumes the next century will be slower. Yet if five platforms converge — AI, robotics, energy storage, multiomic sequencing, and public blockchains — why should growth stall? If anything, history suggests another leap.

Don’t just watch interest rates. Watch the rate at which these technologies spread. That is the true driver of growth.

The Fifth Clue: Convergences Already Here

The future is not theoretical. You can see it already:

• Tesla betting on transformers to make full autonomy viable.
• Genomics fused with AI, lifting accuracy by 60%.
• Robots performing new tasks because AI gives them adaptability.
• Batteries three times as energy-dense as they were when the first iPhone launched — now powering wearable smart glasses that last all day.
• SpaceX and T-Mobile building a satellite network at a fraction of Iridium’s bankrupt cost model.
• Florida utilities channeling excess solar energy into Bitcoin mining — a controversial but striking way to turn waste into profit.

These are not science fiction. They are markers. When you see synergies like these multiplying, know that the express train is already moving.

The Sixth Clue: Legacy vs. Disruption

Look at who is standing still. Legacy firms born in the age of combustion and cashflow stability cannot adapt at the same speed. They protect margins, defend dividends, and hesitate. But their caution is a liability.

On the other side are the disruptors: firms riding Wright’s Law curves, scaling faster, cutting costs deeper, embedding AI more aggressively. Their path may be uneven, but the trajectory is unmistakable.

This is the creative destruction Joseph Schumpeter warned about. If you are invested in the old world, beware.

The Final Clue: The Human Question

Even pioneers feel the unease. Geoffrey Hinton, dubbed the godfather of AI, once said that if he were starting his career again, he might become a plumber. His point was clear: the professions we consider “safe” may no longer be.

Generative AI models like ChatGPT have shown how quickly white-collar skills — analysis, drafting, even creativity — can be automated. If AI can now handle contracts, translations, or medical scans, what remains distinctively human?

It may be adaptability, ethics, judgment. But the warning is sharp: jobs of the mind may be as vulnerable as jobs of the hand once were.

The Express Train

Technology has always advanced. But never before have multiple learning curves, each deflationary, each exponential, converged at once.

This is why you must watch. Whether you are investing for profit, planning a career, or simply trying to understand the world your children will inherit, look for these clues.

Artificial intelligence at the center. Costs collapsing along Wright’s Law. Deflation — good and bad — reshaping balance sheets. GDP growth defying expectations. Convergences already visible. Disruptors against incumbents. The human role itself in question.

It is coming like an express train. The only choice is whether you prepare to ride it — or risk being run over.