Sam Kaplan
January 9, 2023
People often ask me what will be the biggest technological change over the next few decades. To me, the dominant memes of the future are incomplete. Self-driving cars, virtual reality, automation of manual and creative work, mRNA treatments, space exploration all improve our material reality and continue our ascent into the digital world. But, ultimately these are all linear extensions of the last few decades of technological development. Our world will become shinier and shinier, at least on the surface.
But, we also have to reckon with the negative impacts of the computer and information age. Even as the world has become much wealthier and more technologically advanced, and as our minds continue to be abstracted away from our bodies, depression, loneliness, alienation, and isolation have boomed. People have called social media the cigarettes of our time. While this has caused some to sour on technological advances, in reality, this is just part of the age-old cycle of action and reaction. Just as societal antibodies have significantly curbed smoking, so too will we curb the negative effects of the recent rapid technological change. In fact, I believe a new technology - Decision Tech - will not only slow recent trends, but completely reverse them. Decision Tech will make people more fulfilled, connected, and significantly decrease inequality.
I find that the things I’m most excited to work on are the things that I am most excited about for myself. Decision Tech stems from a constant realization that I could be doing things - everything - so much better. Life is overwhelming – especially in a world with iMessage, Twitter, Slack, and TikTok. Every moment is pregnant with a million possibilities. And, every year I look back and say holy shit I’ve made so many mistakes! So many things I wish I had done, and so many I wish I hadn’t. But, what if life had a shortcut? What if I could skip the boring and easy stuff, and focus on the things that I truly care about?
To me, it’s this potential that excites me more than any other future technology I’ve heard about. Imagine we live in a world with data self-custody. Instead of all of your data living in silos - Google, Facebook, iMessage, Netflix, Apple, Twitter, Notion, etc - it all lives in your personal system. Decision Tech would be able to use all of your data (in a privacy-preserving way). This might start out as a recommendation algorithm. Even though Netflix has likely invested hundreds of millions of dollars into their recommendation algorithm, this would be 1000x better because it would know so much more about you - small things like what you watched on other platforms, or bigger things like that you just had a big fight with your friend.
From a simple recommendation algorithm, Decision Tech would become more proactive. Imagine if we could take all of the tricks that social media apps have developed over the past decade, and instead of applying them for an addictive engagement loop, we use them to mentor, coach, and help everyone. Let’s say that you’re a bit overweight and a bit unhealthy. You know you should exercise. Everyone’s told you that for years. But, you’ve never been able to get in the habit. Well, your new digital assistant can help. It might be as simple as inserting exercise in just the right part of your schedule. It might know a different type of exercise that you’ll respond to better. It might pair you with exercise buddies. It might show you data-driven predictions of what will happen if you don’t exercise, delivered with a push notification at just the right time. It might even remind your partner to nudge you.
Fitness is just the beginning. Using data aggregated across millions of people, Decision Tech can help us make some of the most fundamental decisions in our life from where we work, to who our friends are, even to who we marry. But, it starts by helping us with the small things. Easy, no pain, pure wins. Imagine you go to Paris one day. Your hotel is automatically booked and your day is planned (or kept free, if that’s your personality). At night, you’re invited into a Parisian’s home where you join a small dinner party. The group isn’t random. It’s all people you hit it off with immediately, like you’re all old friends.
As the technology begins to consistently make your life better, as it continually delights you, you’ll trust it more and more. And that’s what’s at the core of Decision Tech: trust. While we are surrounded by technology that seeks to help us make decisions - Google, fitness trackers, spreadsheets, ads, Yelp, etc - at the end of the day, we’re still in the information age, not the decision age. Instead of clarity, all this information is overwhelming: an endless sea of FOMO, endless customization, endless opportunities, endless decisions. Decision Tech is the solution. You no longer need to weigh the pros and cons of so many minutiae. Decision Tech turns life into Google Maps. Set the destination, focus on what’s important, but don’t waste time fumbling through a map, just follow the directions as they come. Trusting that the route it chooses based upon millions of data points is better than anything you could have done alone.
But, while this started as just something I really want for my life, it’s much bigger than that. Decision Tech can rebuild our country’s civic fabric. Loneliness will evaporate. Connection and community will grow and blossom. Just as this technology can get you to exercise, it can also help people to stop using destructive drugs. But, it’s not just about mitigating problems. Decision Tech will raise everyone’s ambition and esteem. The well-off grow up surrounded by mentors, role models, resources, and connections. Decision Tech can be a surrogate, but more than that it can connect us all together. I grew up on the south side of Chicago, but never had meaningful connections with anyone outside of my neighborhood. If some system were able to suggest someone I could meet, maybe to teach about software engineering, maybe just to make a friend, I would jump at it in a heartbeat. Because this isn’t just a random connection, it’s not just a dreary community service project, it will be fun! And potentially even a relationship for life. Now, repeat this connecting process across millions of people and a new social fabric starts to form.
So, what are the next steps? This isn’t going to happen overnight, or even a year from now. Decision Tech will take decades to mature. Think about how different society was 30 years ago - no cell phones, no internet, no Zoom, no TikTok. The two biggest missing pieces are data and machine learning algorithms. We need a way for developers to easily access all of someone’s data instead of it being siloed and locked up in Big Tech. Progress is already well underway on this effort through web3/crypto. The current bottleneck for decentralization is L1 blockchain scaling, which I talk about more here. The other big piece is more advanced machine learning. Instead of single feedforward models, we’ll need to move to a 3D, multi-network world where thousands of engineers can collaborate on large powerful models. As these pieces evolve, Decision Tech will grow slowly. It might start as a recommendation layer fitting in nicely with web3’s interoperable and decentralized philosophy, to deeper and more specific use cases, to finally a generalized system. The future is never crystal clear. But, when I think of the single most powerful innovation possible, it’s for technology to touch us not just materially, but spiritually, making our lives healthier, fuller, happier, and a lot more exciting.