<p>Ziad Abdelnour is a Wall Street investor, author, and the current President and CEO of Blackhawk Partners. In order to predict where &ldquo;future big bucks will be made,&rdquo; he explains that one must first look to where the world is headed.</p>
<p>Just as digital cameras eliminated the Kodak company, Abdelnour predicts that future technologies like self-driving cars, 3D printing, and artificial intelligences (AIs) threaten to eliminate 70-80% of jobs in the next two decades. ;</p>
<p>If you want to make money in what he calls the &ldquo;fourth industrial revolution,&rdquo; you need to know what to expect. Abdelnour&rsquo;s bold predictions are optimistic, grim, and shocking all at the same time. &ldquo;Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years,&rdquo; he writes. ;</p>
<p>Uber is the perfect example. The company owns no cars. In essence, it&rsquo;s just a software tool &ndash; but that software tool is now the biggest taxi company on the planet.</p>
<p>Airbnb owns no properties, but has become the largest hotel company in the world.  ;</p>
<p>Back to artificial intelligences: &ldquo;Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world,&rdquo; writes Abdelnour. Just this year, an AI beat the world&rsquo;s best Go player &ndash; an achievement not predicted to occur until 2026. ;</p>
<p>Law and finance careers are taking a beating as robo-advisers and smartphone apps eliminate jobs. For example, &ldquo;IBM Watson&rdquo; provides fast, basic legal advice that is 20% more accurate than human advice. It also helps nurses diagnose cancer (and is 4x more accurate than a human). ;Abdelnour predicts there will be &ldquo;90% less lawyers in the future,&rdquo; with only specialists remaining. ;</p>
<p>&ldquo;In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans,&rdquo; he continues. Self-driving cars will soon disrupt the automotive industry. &ldquo;Our kids will never get a driver&rsquo;s license and will never own a car.&rdquo; ;</p>
<p>Cities will ;evolve as noise, traffic, and pollution are reduced to a fraction of what they are today. Many of the 1.2 million people who die annually in car crashes will live; parking garages and lots will be transformed into green space. Insurance companies will be forced to drop prices and change their business models as car accidents are reduced to a minimum. ;</p>
<p>On the flip side, many car companies will go bankrupt. &ldquo;Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels.&rdquo; ;</p>
<p>Simultaneously, ;coal companies will be forced out of business as the nation turns to the sun for its energy. In 2016, &ldquo;more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil.&rdquo; Electricity is on its way to becoming clean and inexpensive, which will come hand in hand with cheap and plentiful water. ;&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water,&rdquo; Abdelnour reminds us. &ldquo;Desalination now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter.&#8221;</p>
<p>The health industry will be rocked by the &ldquo;Tricorder X,&rdquo; a medical device (named after a Star Trek tool) that works with your smartphone to take blood samples and retinal scans. It can identify nearly any disease &ndash; and it will be cheap. In just a few short years, everyone will have access to affordable, world-class medicine.</p>
<p>In the manufacturing industry we have the breathtaking rise of the 3D printer (whose price dropped from $18,000 to just $4,000 in 10 years). Today, 3D printers are used to create airplane parts, shoes, and spare parts for space stations. China has already managed to print out an entire 6-story office building (piece by piece, of course). ;</p>
<p>By the end of 2016, you will be able to scan your feet with your smartphone and print out your own shoes using a 3D printer. ;&ldquo;By 2027, 10% of everything that&rsquo;s being produced will be 3D printed,&rdquo; writes Abdelnour.</p>
<p>When it comes to future business opportunities, you must ask yourself if that niche will exist in the future. &ldquo;If it doesn&rsquo;t work with your phone, forget the idea,&rdquo; says Abdelnour.  ;&ldquo;Any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to fail in the 21st century.&rdquo;</p>
<p><strong>Editor&#8217;s Note:</strong> We are not afraid of technology at PBP, and we embrace these trends, but ;these technologies are bulldozing their way in and will radically change our economy. Think about these when you are investing, retraining for a job and planning your childs college education. As always as jobs are lost, new jobs are created. And as new technology comes to the forefront, old technology becomes obsolete.</p>
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