Episode 23 The Future Looks Regional, AI-Driven, and More Expensive to Insure

The next few years may be shaped less by one dominant global power and more by regional influence, local resilience, and technologies that give smaller players new leverage. Kevin and Emanuel examine how geopolitics, AI, and climate-related insurance pressure could reshape trade, housing, work, and economic decision-making.

The conversation moves from the future of global leadership and the role of China, BRICS, middle powers, and regional trade blocs to the rising importance of insurance as a signal of climate and economic risk. AI becomes the connecting thread: a force that can amplify knowledge, disrupt jobs, improve modeling, and change what individuals and organizations can build.

Episode Show Notes

Kevin and Emanuel explore three major forces that could shape the near future:

Regional geopolitics and trade

• The possibility of a world with multiple regional powers instead of one dominant superpower
• The role of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency
• China's position in the global economy
• BRICS and the desire to create alternative trade structures
• Regional trade blocs, including examples from the Balkans, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Africa
• Middle powers and strength through cooperation

Climate change and insurance

• Insurance as the canary in the coal mine for climate risk
• How extreme weather may affect property, crops, shipping, manufacturing, and housing markets
• The connection between insurance availability, mortgages, and economic stability
• Historical examples of risk-sharing, maritime trade, and early insurance
• How rising premiums and limited coverage could influence where things are built and how goods move

AI and disruption

• AI as a transformative technology affecting geopolitics, economics, climate response, and work
• AI tools as knowledge amplifiers
• Vibe coding, OpenAI Codex, and building interactive models
• The need to verify AI-generated data and outputs
• AI's potential role in economic modeling, biological sciences, geoengineering, and everyday business tasks
• Short-term disruption in jobs such as bookkeeping, virtual assistance, design, writing, and content work
• The importance of using AI wisely without relying on it blindly

Episode Timestamps

00:00:18 - How the world may look in three to five years

00:01:33 - AI, climate and insurance, and geopolitics

00:03:30 - U.S. leadership and changing geopolitical power

00:05:17 - China and global influence

00:07:19 - The U.S. dollar and reserve currency status

00:10:23 - Regional powers and economic blocs

00:13:59 - Military technology and economic power

00:17:54 - Middle powers and cooperation

00:22:17 - BRICS and alternative trade structures

00:23:50 - Neighbor-based trade and the Balkans

00:27:32 - Climate change and rising costs

00:31:28 - The history and importance of insurance

00:33:35 - Insurance, shipping, and supply chains

00:36:38 - AI, prediction, and complex systems

00:39:00 - Codex and global crude-oil visualization

00:40:39 - Verifying AI-generated data

00:41:50 - AI, geoengineering, and climate response

00:44:19 - AI in organizations, science, and daily work

00:46:52 - AI as a knowledge amplifier

00:48:34 - Adapting to technological change

00:51:01 - Final reflections

Episode Links

• The Think BRICS Substack
• Global Crude Oil Flows, 2024
• U.S. Crude Oil Imports, March 2026

About the Podcast

Hosted by Kevin Carney and Emanuel Petrescu, two curious minds exploring ideas, culture, and everything in between. Curious Pundits is a conversational podcast where each episode starts with a topic that caught our attention and unfolds into thoughtful, unscripted discussion.

Their main ventures are 1307 Digital and Organic Growth.

Entities mentioned in this episode

People

Emanuel Petrescu
Kevin Carney
Xi
Alexander Dugin
Mark Carney
David McWilliams
Ferdinand Magellan
Wes
Elon Musk
Demis Roussos

Countries, regions, and places

United States
Florida
United Kingdom
British Empire
China
Brazil
El Salvador
Russia
USSR
Ukraine
Iran
Persia
Vietnam
Afghanistan
Canada
Ireland
Australia
Hungary
Africa
South America
Asia
North America
Europe
Romania
Bucharest
Bulgaria
Serbia
Balkans
Yugoslavia
Botswana
Puerto Rico
Caribbean
Persian Gulf
Philippines
Thailand
Uzbekistan
India
Saudi Arabia

Organizations, blocs, and institutions

Curious Pundits
BRICS
World Trade Organization
World Bank
International Monetary Fund
United States Navy
Silicon Valley
Khan Academy
NVIDIA
OpenAI
OpenAI Codex
Think BRICS
Substack

Technologies, platforms, and tools

AI
AGI
LLMs
Bitcoin
Blockchain
Cryptocurrency
Claude
ChatGPT
Codex
OpenAI Codex
Social media
Internet

Media, cultural references, and websites

Star Trek
The Hunger Games
Après La Fin Du Monde
curiouspundits.com
Apple
Stitcher
Spotify

Events and concepts mentioned by name

World War II
Bretton Woods Conference
World Cup
Davos
Russia-Ukraine conflict
American Dream
Global reserve currency
Climate change
Insurance
Canary in the coal mine
Geoengineering
SEO

Transcript

[00:00:02] This is the Curious Pundits podcast hosted by Kevin and Emanuel. They explore bits of everything through thoughtful conversations, prioritizing curiosity over conclusions, and they thank you for joining them. Now, on to the podcast. >> Hello, this is another episode of the

[00:00:20] Curious Pundits Podcast. I'm Kevin. I'm the co-host Emanuel and today's topic is how the world would look like in the next we discussed earlier 10 years but I think 10 years is such a long term feels like such long term that I wouldn't actually go that far and I will look at 3 to 5 years now do we have a crystal

[00:00:41] ball I don't know about yours mine is still at the mechanic trying to repair it since it kind of give me the wrong data about some SEO predictions that I used to do. So, he didn't get that one right. But since both you and I and most people that we know are using AI tremendously and things changed even

[00:01:04] from the beginning of this year, we're currently somewhere in the second part of June 2026. And things have changed tremendously since January 2026 since we actually launched this podcast all together. So, I thought maybe this is a good opportunity to record an episode and do this imagination. It's an

[00:01:22] exercise to kind of see where potentially the world will be going and maybe we'll get a few things right. Why not? Kevin, thoughts? >> Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on this. The first thought is who are we to be able to make such predictions? The second thought is is that there are some

[00:01:42] unmistakable tensions in the world which I think is what we ought to talk about and then how these things might unfold. So I've personally identified I would say three broad areas of tensions being created in the world. The first one of which is AI. It is fundamentally a transformative technology and it's going

[00:02:06] to have a big impact in a variety of ways. The next one is the canary in the coal mine for climate change is the insurance industry. As extreme weather events become both larger and more numerous, they're going to cause more and more destruction of buildings, farm crops, and that's going to result in

[00:02:28] more and more insurance claims and insurance companies are going to come under more strain and it's going to be interesting to see how that unfolds. Wonder how what the price prices will >> Well, in some cases, it's prices. In other cases, it's just availability. Some private insurance companies are

[00:02:45] already not renewing property insuranceances in Florida because they're anticipating damages that they can't cover by the amount of premiums they're allowed to charge. So, they're like, "We're just not going to do it." You can't have a housing market without mortgages. You can't have mortgages

[00:03:04] without insurance. So when the private insurers leave, who's going to step in? And the answer is the state of Florida or the United States. This is what always happens. So a government comes in with a insurance plan that is a very high deductible, very high premium, but it's better than nothing. That's just

[00:03:26] what happens, right? And then what's >> The third one. You said there are three. >> Yeah. The third one is what I'm going to call geopolitics. just in aggregate as the United States accelerates the rate at which they are withdrawing from a position of leadership for the entire world. And let me segue briefly into

[00:03:48] that. The last empire was the British Empire. And what identified them as the empire was that they policed the global maritime shipping routes to make sure that global trade continued as uninterrupted as possible. And after World War II, the United States took on that role. What defines the United

[00:04:10] States as the global superpower is that the United States Navy policed the global shipping lanes and the global shipping lanes have become increasingly important since the end of World War II, which is when the US took over this role simply because of the sheer volume of global trade. As the US kind of retreats

[00:04:32] from that position of global leadership, it's going to create these power vacuums all over the world that are going to be filled in various ways. And I think that's the other main pressure point to be discussed. >> We're going to get to that. I also realized that it's been a while since

[00:04:48] you and I have recorded an episode. We had so many amazing guests by the way. Amazing guests. So this was long due essentially. Three topics I agree. Where do we want to start with from which one? Let's start with AI. It's the 8 million pound gorilla on the planet right now. >> Or maybe the last one because I think

[00:05:06] this AI has the power to influence all the others including climate change, including global powers. >> Yeah. Okay. Let's start with global >> So, United States as you said it's drawing. We established from previous episodes and all the world leaders, thought leaders are kind like in

[00:05:27] agreement that China has taken a significant role in leadership and we have seen for the past couple of years especially since the current administration the administration has taken an active role a more what's the word I'm looking for I won't say necessarily active but more of a

[00:05:49] presence has established itself as a presence in and show interest in the global affairs. Now by far by what we understand in the western society as being the dominant power the influencer and the leader but still it's probably the next word leader right in inevitably >> you actually push back on the word

[00:06:14] inevitably but anyway go on and then I'll add in >> that's where I struggle with as well inevitably because and I still have the struggle understanding that and maybe I'm sometimes not seeing the big picture. I always feel like I don't have all the pieces of the information. But

[00:06:33] also I don't believe that at the moment at least it sells the dream that actually built previously probably the United Kingdom and then we all know America right building a dream the American dream where you can come to that country regardless from where you are regardless of your background. If

[00:06:50] you work hard and do all those things then you'll end up being somehow successful. And I'm not saying that you can't achieve that in China, but I'm not sure about their immigration policies for example. I'm not sure about the how certain things that for me are important like religious freedom for example and

[00:07:10] probably the single most influential thing is the economic aspect. You're right. Okay. Who has access to the wealth? So those are my thoughts. >> Let me talk about an important economic aspect about being a superpower. Now I think part of what you just spoke about like China being the dominant entity and

[00:07:31] I hear a lot of people talk about China might be the dominant entity. I think we buy into the concept of the dominant entity because we've lived our entire lives under a two superpower and then a one superpower model. But this is not necessarily the model that will be carried into the future. And the reason

[00:07:52] I say that is if you So in 1944 at the Brett and Woods conference, the American delegation said the US dollar will be the global reserve currency. And if you got a problem with that, get over it. Right? This is just the way it's going to be. Right? If you're going to insist that your currency be the global reserve

[00:08:11] currency, everyone in the world has to have some of it. You have to literally ship your currency overseas. Otherwise, they can't use it to buy stuff because they don't have it. Now, the easiest way to do that is to run a balance of trade deficit to import a lot more than you export. And through that process, people

[00:08:33] all around the world, they collect US dollars. So, that has contributed to a decline in US manufacturing. We export less, therefore we don't need to build as much. But the accumulation of US dollars in the hands of other people leads to them wanting to do things with them. So they have this stash of US

[00:08:54] dollars in some account someplace. And if it just sits there, it doesn't get any interest. And if they invest it in something, it gets a return on investment. Well, where are the bulk of the assets that one can invest in with US dollars in the United States? Right? So that's why Brazilian companies are

[00:09:14] buying American meat processing companies and Chinese individuals and companies are buying American farmland. They got a ton of US dollars they're sitting on because it's the global reserve currency and they want to do something good with it, right? So they're buying American assets and a lot

[00:09:31] of Americans are like, should we be allowing this? And from a national security perspective, the answer is probably no. But way back in 1944 when we declared that the US dollar would be the reserve currency, we set this in motion. Well, China doesn't seem very open to people who are not Chinese

[00:09:51] buying assets in China. So as a result of that, do they want their currency to be the global reserve currency? Because if it is, people are going to want to do that and it's going to put pressure on their economy and they probably don't want to do that, right? So my basis for pushing back on the idea that it's

[00:10:06] inevitable, China probably doesn't want to be the dominant empire because they want to keep their economy relatively closed and they want to keep exporting to the rest of the world. It's working really well for them and why would they want to change plans now? >> So I have an answer.

[00:10:23] >> I know it's a big question, right? If we move into the future and there isn't a dominant superpower, what does that mean? It means we're going to have a series of regional powers. The Americas could become an economic block. Asia could become an economic block and Europe maybe with Africa could become an

[00:10:42] economic block. And there'll be a lot of trade and commerce within the block and there'll be trade within blocks. But in terms of geopolitics, I think it's fairly likely that there's going to be a whole bunch of regional powers >> with that. I agree. And in a sense it already kind of is and it always has

[00:11:00] been just that some powers were more powerful and right now I said is the AI component that's coming along and it's not unlikely that the Asian AI will work different than the North American AI which will be significantly different than the European AI which will be different than the South American and

[00:11:24] whatnot. We're talking about more than the LLMs that we have right now. We're talking about, as they call it, the universal general artificial intelligence, AGI, or expanded. And that automatically implies that what I'm trying to say is that it gives smaller entities a power that they wouldn't have

[00:11:48] had previously and they become dominant in certain way. I'm giving the example of El Salvador for example a small country which has changed tremendously nevertheless due to the power of the Bitcoin the blockchain the cryptocurrency which in the area not a global influence not a global power but

[00:12:07] within the area in those regions it has become a and obviously it's subject to debate how good for the overall general state of well-being is probably but for those who Don't know El Salvador had one of the biggest crime rates around the world per capita murders all over. They have a controversial president who have

[00:12:28] jailed most of the criminals and also has pegged Bitcoin as the main has pegged their currency to Bitcoin as opposed to gold. The US dollars as everyone else has it if I'm not mistaken. I think that's what happened. >> I think El Salvador I think El Salvador does both. I'm going to Google for that.

[00:12:48] >> We need to Google. Yeah, that's why something I don't remember. Nevertheless, it made an impact locally. Now, a technology like that has the power to give more agency to smaller independent nations that would have otherwise be at the mercy of larger ones that you know don't have either some

[00:13:11] natural resources or some human capital or whatnot. But most likely the world will look like a few regions that would have their own influence. There's this uh political thinker from Russia Dugin Alexander Duggin and his was very adamant on promoting the panurasian continent putting Russia at the center

[00:13:33] of the world essentially but nevertheless having other countries being under the influence and we're talking about the former USSR and and more depends who you ask but uh I said I don't we don't have the answers we just make some uh >> it's fun to speculate Right.

[00:13:50] >> Speculations. That's the word. But I believe that the technology can give some power to the little guy essentially. And just >> I think in more ways than one to segue into looking for the right words here, but the relationship between economic dominance and military dominance has

[00:14:10] always been pretty tight going back to the beginning of human civilization. And the people with the biggest baddest armies who could inflict the most lethal force the fastest tended to run things and then their currency became the dominant currency and all that good stuff, right? But if you take a look

[00:14:27] right now, both Ukraine and Iran are holding their own against what were believed to be vastly superior militaries using relatively inexpensive technologies, ballistic missiles and drones. So this is the case where a technology is definitely giving the little guy a strategic advantage and a

[00:14:50] tactical advantage over the big guys and they're not tolerant of being pushed around quite as much. >> I wouldn't call Iran the little guy. We need to remember I always try to refer to as Persia. So not Iran like a random country but Persian an empire. A history has ruled the world and especially that

[00:15:10] part of the world for thousands thousands of years. So it's not oh yeah we can stand up a few aggressors because we're united and fighting for the same front as well as Ukraine. We need to remember that during the USSR period most of the missiles were on their territory and because of strategic

[00:15:29] locations as well the nuclear missiles and inevitably that prepared the population the local population which previous what happened the current Ukrainian population were like very mixed. So many Russian people were living here Ukraine. As Ukrainians, we won't go into there. So I wouldn't say

[00:15:48] necessarily that Ukraine is the little guy. Yes, you would expect because it's this narrative of the Russian force, but realistically people who like knew weren't taken by surprise. Whereas the El Salvador case, if you ask me 5 years ago, will it ever turn a corner? Not in a million years. You need to remember

[00:16:06] that they had the highest crime per capita for a long time and the culture the gang culture there was like embedded in the daily life and somehow it turned a corner with the help of at the right time right the time played a huge role right bitcoin was I don't know couple of thousands and all of a sudden it turned

[00:16:31] to 60,000 then 100k overnight so whatever investment made more than 10xed overnight that gave access to some capital that will have moved things around. Other significant players internationally that you think that could make a stand and I'm not talking about the World Cup.

[00:16:51] >> Yeah, understood. Right. Although I learned I'm going to get on the soap box. I get in every once in a while and I learned yesterday a remarkable statistics. So of the God, it's been so long since I looked at this. Is it 32 teams who enter the World Cup? >> 48, I think.

[00:17:09] >> Okay. So, 48 teams go in, half get eliminated. So, yeah, they're going to go to that would mean it would be So, 24 teams go to the round of 16. >> I can't believe I don't know this, but anyway, I'm having trouble with the numbers, right? But anyway, the comment made was of all of the nations competing

[00:17:28] in the World Cup right now, only one does not have universal healthcare, >> which is >> the United States. >> I was like, that can't be true. But apparently it's true, right? But anyway, >> who dreams of immigrating to Pakistan, for example?

[00:17:46] >> Well, people dream of immigrating to >> but if >> I mean, there's lots of countries that I wouldn't want to immigrate to, but there's lots of get into the US, right? >> Maybe. Believe it or not, there are some people who don't want to get into the US, especially these days. But anyway,

[00:18:01] back to who are the other players on the global stage. I have this weird idea that one of the major players on the global stage today is current Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. That speech he gave at Davos where he spoke about the middle powers, it just kind of sucked me right in. I think he's on to

[00:18:20] something. His basic idea is that what he calls the middle powers need to kind of hang together and then do this strength in numbers kind of thing. And basically he's talking about a trading block of relatively small countries Canada, Ireland, Australia, Hungary. It's not exactly small. Maybe in terms

[00:18:42] of population of course, but in terms of region and most importantly natural resources, I wouldn't call it actually by far small. >> Yeah, Canada is not small in terms of square miles, but the size of the population, the size of the economy, and for what it's worth, when I referred to

[00:19:00] Iran as the little guy, it was in comparison to the United States. like the United States failed to is failing to defeat Iran militarily which is like >> the argument that Vietnam the communist Vietnam was less prepared than Iran is today I would argue but still they took a stand I'm not sure Afghanistan also is

[00:19:28] an example that's >> actually Afghanistan is an extreme example so I actually read a book a while ago about the history of Afghanistan. Going back to Alexander the Great, do you know how many times Afghanistan was successfully occupied? Successfully meaning the locals didn't

[00:19:46] drive you out. >> I don't think it was. Was it ever or just made they had a post, >> right? Like they do not like being occupied. 2,300 years it's like we do not like being occupied. >> No, you can't. >> I don't know what it is about the

[00:20:00] mindset there, but they do not like being occupied. No one has stayed in Afghanistan when the Afghan people fought them to leave >> and geographically is not an advantage to the aggressor the ones that wants to conquer. That's one. The second is the local culture because Afghanistan is a

[00:20:19] mix of many cultures there. It's not just like one culture. Historically, they've been more influenced by Persia. They were also influenced by the how to call it the Indian empire Indian states regions but mostly by Persia but it's kind of like a local ethos that doesn't matter the right now as far as I

[00:20:42] understand of course and based on what I spoken with doesn't matter what kind of cultural or ethnicity you are it's if you adhere to this ethos then you're Afghan essentially and yeah it's almost impossible to dominate that area. But I said, yeah, little guy, big guy. I wouldn't call Iran by far the little

[00:21:07] guy. Maybe a little bit underdog. Maybe like a champion that has had a couple of rough years. Yes. But still a champ and still a powerful entity that has proven that it can stand on their own. Probably at tremendous cost. Of course, some cars that any other country wouldn't have put up with, but I'm thinking maybe some

[00:21:30] other influencers around regions such as Africa or South America. Brazil for example, it's an interesting topic to explore a little bit because it has the potential at least from a I always look at the human capital as well. So not just the numbers, not just the natural resources, but the I won't call it

[00:21:52] culture, but the way of people approach when doing things and can they actually do some stuff and based on my interaction with people from Brazil, I think that they can do more stuff than people from other countries. So anything like that on your end? And maybe we should discuss bricks as well because

[00:22:11] that's an interesting entity. bricks for those who don't know it's a is Brazil, Russia, India, >> China, Saudi Arabia, >> Saudi Arabia, >> but now it's like oh it's a fairly large trading block these days. >> Well, I don't know about fairly large

[00:22:25] but it's much larger than just those five nations. >> Yeah. But those are the most powerful, the most influential ones and probably similar entities could come up in the near future. For example, in Romania, there was a very not so popular, but there was a train of thought of

[00:22:41] organizing ourselves more closely with our neighbors and start developing more trading with Bulgaria or Serbia, which are Bulgaria is part of European Union. Serbia is not. Nevertheless, historically, we had relationships, important relationships. And I know for example, because of the communist regime

[00:23:00] in Romania was so drastic, they wouldn't broadcast anything. So people were tuning in to because Bulgaria is fairly close to especially people in Bucharest to listen to to games to football games or to watch some cartoons in Bulgarian you know and we some people can say phonetically how they were like what

[00:23:20] they were listening there right that was not fun so there's this historical relationship there and to an extent at least for a short period those would be beneficial for everyone if you establish these kind of like created with Romanian being the biggest player and kind have it influenced the way this dictates but

[00:23:41] at a slightly larger scale do you see anything any other country that can potentially influence some regions? >> I think the main point of what you spoke about is valid likely and probably going to unfold that way. So Irish economist David McWills has a kind of like he's a master of like piffy little statements

[00:24:04] and he has one historically nations trade with their neighbors. This is how we've always done it. People trade with other people who are in geographic proximity. So the idea that there would be a Balkans trade block. It just makes perfect sense. Now, of course, the Balkans has had some ethnic strife

[00:24:24] issues well beyond what other people consider reasonable and normal that have the potential to interfere in trade. But Yugoslavia got broken up and maybe they've moved beyond that and who knows, right? I hope so. >> Yeah, not entirely. Progress has been made, but there's still room for more

[00:24:42] >> reconciliation. basic idea behind not the basic idea but one of the ideas behind globalization was as we developed increasing interdependence in terms of trade we would be less likely to go to war that didn't really pan out the Russia Ukraine thing like in theory our interdependence on trade

[00:25:02] would have prevented that conflict and it didn't so you know I don't know what the main drivers there are but I do think that regionalness is likely to be a much more dominant theme. I think that so let me talk a little bit about what I understand about bricks. A lot of people

[00:25:20] seem to think that bricks has this desire for a global reserve currency which is going to replace US dollar. So there's a bricks newsletter I read on Substack called think bricks and some of the articles are just absolute crap but some of them are really good and insightful. So to a certain extent it

[00:25:40] allows me to like stay a breast of what the bricks block is doing and potentially thinking about doing. And they have created a kind of like a trading currency and it's made up of a basket of currencies but it's 40% gold and but it doesn't seem as if their big focus is on having a currency. They just

[00:26:04] need an accounting unit in which to tabulate their trade. What they really want is to break free of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. They feel and articulate often that the rules of global trade are specifically designed to benefit the wealthier countries more.

[00:26:28] So the rules of trade are according to these guys set up so that some nations provide natural resources which are shipped someplace else and then processed into a finished product and the bricks countries are like we want to do the processing we want to manufacture. We want to sell the

[00:26:47] finished products but the agreements that are in place aren't set up to do that. So there are efforts to move more from raw mining of iron for example into providing products that are manufactured with iron is we have to separate from the entire set of rules that prevents us from doing this. So we're going to start

[00:27:10] our own group and we're going to create our own rules. So that seems to be what bricks is and they're they're starting to do it near as I can tell. Like I don't know how long it's going to take before I don't know Batswana is a source of diamonds. So how long will it be until they become a source of finished

[00:27:28] jewelry? I don't know. But that's the direction they seem to be moving in. >> Wait, fair point. Okay. So interesting. We learn from other episodes that where we had some amazing guests. That's not exactly how things should work and they usually end up costing more than you anticipate. And I give also the example

[00:27:47] of the planned economy that I grew up in again the communist period where you produce stuff that nobody needs and just use it for the sake of it and that's not an option either. Okay. Essentially we covered a couple of things about that. I want to move on to the second item that you said is going to have and it's

[00:28:09] already having a big influence on the future. And I was reading an article the other day a few months or maybe could be years back I don't even remember about how the climate change has influenced certain routes about where planes have traveled especially in Asia and some people have confirmed to me that it's

[00:28:32] not the same experience they had 10 years ago as of now more turbulences more delays more emergency landings and whatn not especially especially around Thailand, Vietnam and all that area. Probably still insignificant if you look at it from a global scale, but still something that many specialists are at

[00:28:52] risk concerned. And that's in a way natural. First of all, climate change is a delicate topic. Some people would kill. It's a life or death situation theoretically for everyone. So, we should be aware probably somewhere in the middle. I'm not the extremist, not denying that the climate personally,

[00:29:12] of course, I'm just talking speaking on myself, not even Kevin right now. I personally believe that we humans have an influence on the climate, of course, can have an influence, positive or negative. It's probably not as extreme as some describe, but we need to be aware. We need to not do things just

[00:29:27] because, and we need to raise awareness. Of course, climate has always changed for the past couple hundred thousand years. It has influenced how the human have lived, where they migrated, what kind of food they ate, what kind of crops they had, what kind of animals they raised and so forth and most likely

[00:29:47] will change. Probably not that as such an accelerated rate as it is right now. But we start seeing these influences more more and more. And one example is the one that I just gave about some airplane routes. And obviously this will translate into either you know it's going to end up in costing us more

[00:30:08] essentially all these will cost us more the ones that we are actually using that because they're either going to need to take different routes or they're going to need to make investments to better equipment or maybe some I don't know fly at a higher altitude or lower altitude which consumes more gas and gas nowadays

[00:30:25] kerosene might be influenced again by the geopolitics of the world and so forth but expect things locally in other places as well. To your point, you gave the Florida example, probably those places weren't actually the best place to build houses in the first place. So, I don't think that was something new. I

[00:30:45] think Florida always experienced hurricanes and all kinds of climate influences, more drastic than other places. Even right now we see at the World Cup that the game was suspended for two hours due to a storm yesterday. I think Argentina's game was suspended because of a severe storm alert and

[00:31:06] those were historically kind like always there. It's not that it happened overnight to an extent probably those where people build those houses that the insurance don't want to insure anymore shouldn't supposed to be there in the first place either. But that's just an assumption right now. I think based on

[00:31:24] some only a couple of information. So back to you. >> Insurance is a lot more important to economies than most people generally think about. So the concept of insurance and various forms of doing it. It's now about 4,000 years old. But without insurance, there would never have been

[00:31:46] trade. Because if you go back to the early days, like the earliest form of trade were these camel caravans across the desert. And by modern standards, they were relatively small volumes and they took a long time to complete, but basically a whole bunch of guys and a whole bunch of camels would leave and

[00:32:04] then two or three years later they would come back with other stuff, right? Well, times they didn't come back at all, but the people who had pulled the money, didn't want to lose all their money. So there was this concept of pooling resources to share risk. people were able to buy shares in ventures rather

[00:32:23] than having to fund the entire thing etc etc right so this carried over into maritime trade same thing ships would go out like everyone knows of Ferdinand Mellan right first guy to circumn the globe although he didn't actually because he got killed in the Philippines but what a lot of people don't know is

[00:32:42] five ships and about 200 guys left and then three years later one ship and about 20 guys came back. What happened to the other ships and the other guys? The ship sank and the guys died. RIGHT? IT WAS RISKY. RIGHT? NOW, having said that, they came back with a ship full of clothes. CLOTHES WERE SO valuable that

[00:33:02] the initial investors and the 20 guys were like they made out like bandits. The 20 guys were set for life because they had made so much money. >> Exactly. The same principle that venture capitalists from Silicon Valley these days operate under, right? They make like investments, billions of dollars of

[00:33:21] investments that and 90% of them don't pan out. Simply go bankrupt or money burn essentially, money thrown into a fire. Yet one, if one successfully, it compensates and then adds tremendous wealth to the others. >> It's hard to overstate the degree to which insurance is embedded in every

[00:33:42] aspect of the economy. Maybe not every aspect, but almost every aspect and has been. Now, I I was going to say in a modern monetary economy, but insurance has been important to commerce for about 4,000 years. Even the ships that are stuck in the Persian Gulf, it's not the case that they can't attempt to run the

[00:34:02] Gulf, if you will, and maybe they'll make it out unmolested. It's that the insurance coverage doesn't cover acts of war. So, the people who own the cargo and the people who own the ships are like making a judgment call. Do we try and get out and hope that the Iranians don't hit us with missiles and drones,

[00:34:21] or do we just incur the daily cost of the ship being parked in the Persian Gulf? And they're choosing to incur the daily cost of the ships being parked in the Persian Gulf for a variety of reasons. One of which is if they run the Gulf, they've temporarily at least forfeited their insurance policy for

[00:34:39] that duration, right? And the value of the cargos in these ships is almost hard for us to imagine. is worth so much money. So they're not attempting to get out without permission as a result and every aspect of the economy. So as extreme weather events start destroying stuff. I mentioned in a prior episode

[00:34:58] that some years ago 10 12 years ago a hurricane flew through the Caribbean and it destroyed factories in Puerto Rico that produced intravenous bags. So there was a five or six month delay in US hospitals being able to apply their introvenous bags. Those are insurable events and I'm sure that the expenses of

[00:35:20] getting the factories back online were paid in part by the insurance companies. As that happens more and more, the insurance companies have to charge more for the premiums and it gets to a point where it's just not worth it. I can't afford to make introvenous bags in Puerto Rico if I got to pay that much

[00:35:36] for insurance. it really will have a disruptive effect on commerce. So, I don't know. Insurance really is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to climate change and we'll just have to wait and see how things unfold. I suspect that major economic decisions of what to build where and how how it moves

[00:35:56] from point A to point B are going to be heavily influenced by the cost of insurance. Well, for those who don't know the Canary in the coal mine, give us a description. What does that actually mean? It took me I learned about it two or three years ago. >> Some mining operations produce gases

[00:36:14] that have the potential to be lethal, but you can't smell them. So, they would take a canary into the coal mine, and if the canary dropped dead, they would all >> Simple as that. >> And every once in a while, the canary dropped dead. And that was their early warning indicator. and they were very

[00:36:30] thankful that they sought to take one down with them. >> Imagine how many people died before they figure this one out. >> Yeah, it's a kind of a morbid thought. >> And coming back to the main topic, so the world will look like probably all the premiums will go up. Car, house,

[00:36:48] health in terms of pricing. How about the and it's really because when you inject AI into the thinking then realistically and honestly you need to stop a little bit and say okay but is this actually true with the help of AI we can do so many things including some prediction at a scale that were

[00:37:09] unprecedented. You are showing me just before we hit record about a tool that you build with a couple of prompts in a matter of minutes that will show you the trade flow of the yes around the world. So right now it's at our fingertips can build some tools. We have the information we have the

[00:37:29] capacity to do it. So in that paradigm don't think it will be yeah it'll be interesting. I don't even know where to approach and where things will be. Probably more of a Star Trek universe where people will >> love and work for their own for everyone's benefit. The socialist dream

[00:37:53] >> a Star Trek universe is an optimistic view. The other potential way that we could go would be the Hunger Games. It depends on some pretty major decisions that need to be made. To just talk about AI briefly in terms of its ability to make existing problems worse and its ability to solve existing problems. I

[00:38:16] think in the short term we all just have to acknowledge that it's actually going to make existing problems worse. If the predictions of widespread unemployment come to fruition, that's not going to be an easy transition. And AI consumes currently enormous amounts of energy and enormous amounts of water. And we don't

[00:38:38] have good solutions. But we all want the AI. So we're accepting of this. However, as the technology progresses, each generation consumes less energy and eventually we'll get down to where they consume very modest amounts of energy. And I saw just today I saw Nvidia announced a data center cooling system

[00:39:03] built on antifreeze like a car, right? So it actually doesn't use much water at all. So as these technologies become available and get deployed, that will put less stress on our energy and water system. But as you commented, these AI tools do allow us to think of complex systems in more I hate this word, but

[00:39:28] I'm going to use it anyway, more holistic ways. And to describe for the viewers, so we did an episode a while ago about energy resilience versus the efficiency of production and distribution with West. And I was just curious about global energy flows. I used OpenAI codeex to literally vibe

[00:39:50] code and I'll put this on the website somewhere a somewhat interactive chart of global crude oil flows from country to country and in aggregate it probably took me maybe 30 minutes to put this whole thing together from scratch. I went through a couple of iterations. First it was just US exports and US

[00:40:10] imports and then can you do the entire world? But now on this web page, you can select the country of export you want to look at or the country of import or just look at everything. Although looking at everything is a little overwhelming because exporters on the left, importers on the right and arrows of various

[00:40:27] thickness running from one to the other, the thickness of the arrow indicating the volume of oil that flows. And it was remarkably easy to put this chart together. It is actually quite >> How accurate is the data though? that still needs to be double checked >> Oh, absolutely. In fact, I told Codeex

[00:40:46] to go to publicly available data sources on its own and download the data and it identified the sources where the data came from. I'm watching it. Okay, I'm getting this file from this place, this file from this place. It saved all the files on my local computer. So, all of that can be verified, but I agree needs

[00:41:04] to be verified. But I understand that in the realm of biological sciences, people are developing AIS that can do protein manipulations a lot better than we've ever been able to do before. I'm also trying to use codecs to vibe code like economic modeling, but the challenge is it's easy to create a model that

[00:41:24] contains equations that are this results in that. The hard part is do those equations actually mirror the real world? In some cases, I'm building this large complex model and it's like this model is not real, right? So I go to go through all the equations one at a time and figure out which ones do and do not

[00:41:43] map to reality and then tune the model through iterations, etc., etc., right? But that's not really a fault of the tool. That's a fault of my understanding what the relationships actually are. But maybe the tool can help me, you know, go out there and look at real data and then generate equations that can explain how

[00:42:01] you get from this to this. You maybe the tool can help me with that. I don't know. But people are going to be using these tools for that kind of stuff in a wide variety of disciplines, including geoengineering the planet in response to climate change. Now, I know that people say, "Who are we to geoengineer the

[00:42:22] planet?" Like it's a very presumptuous thing to do. And I think what those people are missing is that we've been geoengineering the planet for 250 years now. We've just been doing it by We're going to need to get more structured, more we're going to need to figure out how to do it right in

[00:42:41] response to the fact that we've been doing it accidentally now for 250 years. We're going to have to counter that. Um and I don't know exactly what that's going to mean. I don't actually know if we can successfully vent heat into space because space is when it comes to heat, space is an insulator. Like when heat

[00:43:01] conducts through stuff, there's got to be stuff for it to conduct through. And when you leave the atmosphere, there's no stuff for the heat to conduct through, right? So, I don't know exactly how that's going to work, but hopefully people a lot smarter than me are working on that and trying to figure it out. But

[00:43:19] if we can figure out a way to like vent the heat out of the atmosphere, we'll probably be working on that. We'll probably be sprinkling reflective material in the upper atmosphere, dropping it out of airplanes in in order to reflect the infrared back into out into space. So at least we can while not

[00:43:38] necessarily reducing the aggregate temperature of the atmosphere, at least we can prevent it from growing more quickly. But yeah, that's going to be a part of the future. to your point just said that he's going to put some data centers in space. So that if that pans out, it's going to be

[00:43:56] >> I don't know how they're going to cool them. Like again, you've got this data center in space generating an enormous amount of heat and relative to heat conduction, space is an insulator. The reason we can cool data centers on Earth is the water flows through and the water takes the heat someplace else, right?

[00:44:16] But if you're in space, where is this? Someplace else. >> Find it. But where I was going to and reiterate the importance of AI and how we can help the little guy in this case, actually the little guy, me, you and some other anyone essentially can build some stuff

[00:44:33] that they were like close to impossible. So if we can do that, then larger organizations or larger entities, imagine what they can do about it. And they're doing it. To your point, medical advancements have been made significant for the past couple of years of tech science all the aspects just look at

[00:44:54] even I follow the space and how many things they discover as well in the help of AI they can process some stuff faster they can at least not waste time and spend their time more efficiently what matters or what can bring those results as well so I think that will be the thing that will have the most impactful

[00:45:16] influence on our daily lives within the next 3 to 5 years. I'm pretty sure that by the end of this year, the accessible available AI LLM will be 80% as good as anyone else within most job positions, most job positions. Okay? So, it's also already a decent writer and with the help and some guidance, it can become a

[00:45:39] great writer, can help you write great content. Now the design aspect is becoming better and better. It's good with video manipulation. So unlike many bookkeeping, posting, virtual assistants, these are like I don't see them two years from now. For example, I don't see the need of those positions

[00:46:03] done by a human two years from now. Yes. Will I double check if Claude for example enters does my entries bookkeeping? Yes, I'll double check myself, but will I have somebody else, a third person double check it? It's very timeconuming, but you still need and I do bookkeeping manually myself and

[00:46:23] there's benefits to that. There's no particular reason why I cannot delegate this right now to an AI for example. You can easily fed this is the bank statement, put it in a sheet. You can already download them whatever but depends on your workflow. I have a different workflow for certain reasons,

[00:46:41] but I know other organizations that pay a money for this. There's at the moment, we're recording this June 23rd, 2026. There's no particular reason why a human should do that. >> I think this is a specific example of the short-term disruption, but I'm increasingly starting to view AI as a

[00:47:01] knowledge amplifier. And I'm going to go back to the example I just used where I'm trying to build a complex dynamic model of the US economy by vibe coding it with codecs. If I knew what I was doing, this would be a fantastic tool. And the failure is I don't know what I'm doing, right? So, I got this tool that

[00:47:25] allows me to greatly amplify what I know in terms of an interactive tool I can use to run simulations, but I don't know what I'm doing, right? So, I'm learning what equations are and are not meaningful while simultaneously learning to use the tool. And in many ways, the tool being Codeex is turning out to be a

[00:47:51] learning aid because I can look at this page of equations that it spits out and now I got to audit them one at a time. Is this one reasonable? Is this one reasonable? Is this one reasonable? And by virtue of doing that, I'm going to learn what is and is not reasonable. And through I don't know how many

[00:48:09] iterations, I will eventually come up with a good model. Right? But in the meantime, the problem with this process is not the tool. It's my lack of knowledge about what relationships really matter. >> What are you just describing how AI is training you?

[00:48:26] >> Yeah. Or helping me learn. Not so much that the AI is training me, but it's like Khan Academy on steroids. >> I think we should leave it at that because otherwise there's so many things that we could talk about. 10 years ago, I wrote an article 10 12 years ago actually about the future and what the

[00:48:49] world would look like back then. I wasn't off by much. I wasn't right by many. But one thing I would like to end with is the conclusion from this essay essentially not an article but an essay and it's called a launder after the end of the world. It's a song by the misus. I like to use songs as whenever I try to

[00:49:16] describe something and I'm reading it in Romanian so I'm going to do my best to translate it in real time in Romania. Obviously we could use AI but it won't get the nuances that I use. We live extremely times currently things change but we adapt and somehow made it as humans to integrate in every situation.

[00:49:40] Internet and social media gave a significant boost and value to our daily lives globally. Nobody I think was anticipating the extreme popularity this have become. Diversifying our lives in every manner possible and giving access to funds to capital to people all around the world. Think about the influencers.

[00:50:04] However, this freedom is becoming more gated. One thing is security and according to the threads some might be willing to give up this still believe in that. So I don't want to be faced to make this trade anytime soon. Everything needs to be balanced with AI. Use it wisely. It can help. Don't rely on it

[00:50:31] and be prepared because I believe long medium term we're all going to suffer more or less because AI is simply good good enough at least good enough. Back to my comment of AI as a knowledge amplifier. It really depends on what we choose to amplify. We could amplify stuff that creates a lot of good. We

[00:50:55] could also amplify stuff that creates a lot of suffering. kind of a morbid thought but yeah it's a possibility >> I probably my biggest frustration right now is because I work in SEO and for example you won't believe how many customers clients or prospects just send me these reports made by claude or chip

[00:51:12] and say oh this is what chip says this is what claude says this is what and I tell them usually you do the same thing with your doctor whenever you go to him you do the same thing this is what said this is what Claude told me that I have So take everything with a grain of salt. Be prepared. And the most important

[00:51:32] thing that you can do right now is go to That's our website. As of today, we have a new website that we're both very happy and fond of. We're going to be making updates. We're going to add stuff. It looks pretty. It's a place where you can find previous recordings, this recordings, future recordings, and links

[00:51:51] to all the platforms where you can listen to the podcast. Apple, Stitcher, Spotify. Please leave us a comment, hopefully a positive one and a positive rating because that will help us amplify the reach and get other people to know us. Until then, my name is Emmanuel. >> My name is Kevin and thank you for

[00:52:11] >> Thank you for listening to this episode. If you like the podcast, please like, subscribe, and tell others. Visit curiouspundits.com to learn more and stay tuned for the next episode.