Forecast 2050

General David Petraeus believes we need draconian change to prepare for the age of autonomous warfare.

A retired four-star general, Gen. Petraeus commanded U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and led U.S. Central Command before serving as director of the CIA. I sat down with Gen. Petraeus to discuss the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, how autonomous drones and weapons will fight the wars of the future, and the new big ideas we need to keep the world stable for the next 25 years.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:57 Commanding Autonomous Systems
04:55 Revolution, Not Reform
11:21 Inside the Death Zone
19:17 America Is Unprepared for Future Wars
23:41 A New AI Military Service Branch
35:12 The UK Will Lead Military Innovation
42:02 The War for Truth
49:19 The Big Ideas for the Next 25 Years
54:15 The Leaders of the Future

David Petraeus is a former CIA Director who commanded U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is now a partner at KKR and the Chairman of its Global Institute.

General Petraeus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidpetraeus/

Thanks to the Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project for the maps in the interview: www.understandingwar.org and www.criticalthreats.org.

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12
Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City. Head to nebular.vc for more info.

The real reason AI was given to humans is to communicate with animals, according to David Gruber. A marine biologist and National Geographic Explorer, he is the founder of Project CETI, a global effort of more than 50 scientists across eight disciplines working to decode the communication of sperm whales. In this episode of Forecast 2050, I sit down with David to discuss the prospect of an interspecies dialogue and the seismic implications it will have for all of us, whales included.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/can-ai-talk-to-whales-project-ceti

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:48 David's Journey
12:30 An Interspecies Dialogue
17:14 Sperm Whale Language & Culture
23:48 The Breakthroughs Yet to Come
27:49 The Whales Are Yappers
31:03 Sperm Whales Have Accents
39:47 Verifying a Whale Translation
42:13 What Success Looks Like
47:32 Saving the Whales

David Gruber is a marine biologist and National Geographic Explorer who founded Project CETI, a team of more than 50 scientists using AI to decode how sperm whales communicate.

David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-gruber-b003871/
Project CETI on X: https://x.com/ProjectCETI
Project CETI on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/projectceti/
Project CETI Website: https://www.projectceti.org/

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12
Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Fr. Brendan McGuire believes that we still have an opportunity to align AI for the common good, though time is running out. A Silicon Valley executive turned Catholic priest, Fr. Brendan has spent decades as a confidant to the people building frontier technology, and was one of the external contributors to Anthropic’s Claude Constitution.

In this episode of Forecast 2050, Nebular General Partner Finn Murphy sits down with Fr. Brendan to discuss Pope Leo XIV's encyclical about AI, Magnifica Humanitas, why AI needs to learn forgiveness, whether AIs have souls, and why we probably have less than a year before recursive self-improvement to ensure these models benefit humanity.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/father-brendan-mcguire-claudes-priest
Transcript: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/forecast-2050-episode-11-fr-brendan

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:45 Silicon Valley Tech Exec to Man of the Cloth
08:10 We Need Smart AI Regulation
11:46 The Pope's Warning: Don't Build a New AI Tower of Babel
19:10 Why AI Needs to Learn Forgiveness
27:26 What Hugging Face Shows About AI Morality
31:56 Do AIs Have Souls? Would We Baptise An Alien?
40:06 Watching Others Die Puts the AI Doomers In Perspective
44:20 Why Anthropic Asked the Church for Help 53:39 AI Doesn't Have to Be Winner-Takes-All
58:23 We Have Less Than a Year to Shape AI's Morality before RSI
01:02:23 Tolkien Morality vs Game of Thrones Brutality

Fr. Brendan McGuire is an engineer turned Silicon Valley executive turned Catholic priest at St. Simon Parish in Los Altos, CA. He is an external contributor to Anthropic's Claude Constitution.

Fr. Brendan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frbrendanmcguire/
St. Simon Parish: https://stsimon.church/

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12
Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Forecast 2050 Season 2 has arrived with a brand new set of conversations with the thinkers, founders, and investors shaping the next 25 years.

Hosted by Nebular General Partner Finn Murphy.

Guests:

Fr. Brendan McGuire
David Gruber
Gen. David Petraeus
Walter Goodwin & Sir Robin Saxby
Yi-Ling Liu
Laura Kreidberg
Patrick McGee
Francesco Sciortino
Adrian Woolfson
Francis Fukuyama

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12
Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/
Forecast 2050 on X: https://x.com/forecast2050

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Enveda Founder and CEO Viswa Colluru believes we have been looking for new medicines in the wrong places for decades.

In the Season 1 finale of Forecast 2050, I sat down with Viswa and Pablo Lubroth, VP of Special Projects at Enveda, to discuss why 9 in 10 drugs fail in clinical trials despite Big Pharma spending $276 billion in annual R&D, how AI is finally unlocking 99% of nature's chemistry that we've haven't been able to read, why the incentive structure of biotech capital markets is actively bad for patients, why insisting on understanding how a drug works actually slows down drug discovery, why aging may not be inevitable, and why mental health is going to be the defining medical crisis of the next 25 years.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/3dc95f79-4a7e-4c80-9630-970c1e6e2117
Transcript (with helpful links!): https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/beb7222d-efd1-472b-85be-09d7a7faf1a5

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:09 The Quintessential Problem With Drug Discovery
04:57 Pablo’s Journey to Enveda
06:29 Insisting on Understanding Biological Mechanisms Slows Down Drug Discovery
09:39 Science Has Been Divorced From Human Experience
12:22 Scientific Reductionism Has Not Led to Better Drugs
19:31 Lessons Learned From Big Pharma Missing Out On GLP-1s
22:11 Capital Markets Disinventivize Risk-Taking and Harm Patients
28:12 How to Prioritize Which Illnesses to Cure
33:38 Prediction and Prevention is a Better Strategy Than Treatment
38:27 Drugs to Make Us Limitless Like Bradley Cooper
42:53 Aging is Not Inevitable
43:34 Everyone Has a Chinese Peptide Guy
50:13 The Loon Shots for 2050
52:39 Mental Health Will be The Biggest Challenge for 2050
54:46 The AI Revolution in Medicine

Viswa Colluru is the Founder & CEO of Enveda, a clinical-stage biotech company using AI to discover new drugs from nature. He built Enveda from $55K of personal savings into a unicorn with over $500M raised and multiple assets in clinical trials. Before founding Enveda, Viswa was the first Innovation Scientist and Product Manager at Recursion Pharmaceuticals. He holds a PhD in immuno-oncology from UW-Madison.

Pablo Lubroth is a VP of Special Projects at Enveda and the Co-Founder & Editor of Decoding Bio. He previously built and led the biotech practice at Hummingbird Ventures and co-hosts the annual AI x Bio Summit at the NYSE. Pablo holds degrees in Neuropharmacology and Biochemical Engineering from UCL and an MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise from the University of Cambridge.

Viswa on X: https://x.com/viswacolluru
Pablo on X: https://x.com/pablolubroth

Enveda: https://enveda.com
Decoding Bio: https://www.decodingbio.com

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12
Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.