Fifth Avenue: 13 Years From Horses to Cars
Khosla: People say change doesn't happen very fast. I disagree. This is New York City, Fifth Avenue, in the year 1900. There's one car in this picture. This was New York City only 13 years later — one horse, all cars.
Fifth Avenue, 1900: one car. Thirteen years later: one horse, all cars.
The DOE Was Wrong by 20 Years
Khosla: This was a Department of Energy projection in 2010 for the number of electric cars in the US by 2035. They talked to all the experts — and experts only extrapolate the past. If you ask GM or Volkswagen or Ford how many cars there would be, the DOE came up with 2,300 cars.
In 2014, Tesla shipped about 80,000 cars alone. In four years they were wrong by 20 years. That's how fast change can happen.
DOE projected 2,300 electric cars by 2035. Tesla shipped 80,000 in 2014. Wrong by 20 years.
Don't Rely on Experts
Khosla: In 1989, a cartoon said electricity would kill people — very much like people say AI will kill people. Lord Kelvin, the president of the Royal Society — maybe the most informed person in science in the early 1900s — said in about 1906 that heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible. Just before the Wright Brothers flew their plane.
Don't rely on experts. Don't rely on what the world tells you is possible. Create the world you want. There's two types of people — people who extrapolate the past, and people who invent the world they want.
Two types of people: those who extrapolate the past, and those who invent the world they want.