The 2025 Scorecard: Did Our Episode One Prophecies Come True?
Mon Dec 08 2025
Way back in Episode One, we gazed into the crystal ball to predict exactly what the world of AI, business, and politics would look like in 2025. Now, the future has arrived. In this week’s episode, we pull up the tape, dust off those early forecasts, and ruthlessly grade our own homework.
The verdict? As Paddy puts it, "The planets have aligned." From the explosion of autonomous driving—with Waymo now hitting 450k paid rides a week—to the harsh reality of AI displacement in contact centers, many of our "bold" predictions have become standard operating procedure. We even share a real-time case study: how Claude 4.5 successfully diagnosed a failing boiler heat exchanger when a human couldn’t, proving AI is already your new local tradesman.
But we didn't get everything right. We debate the unexpected geopolitical shifts, the "absurdity" of lingering anti-AI sentiment, and the complex reality of the "LLM Wars"—where Google’s Gemini has surged to 650M users, narrowing the gap with ChatGPT.
Join us for a data-packed retrospective as we tally the wins, admit the losses, and figure out who the real winners of 2025 are (Hint: It’s NVIDIA and Starlink, definitely not Legacy Auto).
On the Scorecard this week:
The "Prophecy" Audit: Which Episode One predictions hit the bullseye and which missed the mark?Real-World AI: Diagnosing heating systems via LLM & the 30% drop in customer service roles.Market Winners: Why NVIDIA is worth $4.7T and SpaceX is leaving NASA in the dust.The Political Fallout: How the rise of the far-right and Musk’s polarization affected Tesla.Health Tech Reality Check: GLP-1s, CRISPR, and why wearables are finally saving lives.
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Way back in Episode One, we gazed into the crystal ball to predict exactly what the world of AI, business, and politics would look like in 2025. Now, the future has arrived. In this week’s episode, we pull up the tape, dust off those early forecasts, and ruthlessly grade our own homework. The verdict? As Paddy puts it, "The planets have aligned." From the explosion of autonomous driving—with Waymo now hitting 450k paid rides a week—to the harsh reality of AI displacement in contact centers, many of our "bold" predictions have become standard operating procedure. We even share a real-time case study: how Claude 4.5 successfully diagnosed a failing boiler heat exchanger when a human couldn’t, proving AI is already your new local tradesman. But we didn't get everything right. We debate the unexpected geopolitical shifts, the "absurdity" of lingering anti-AI sentiment, and the complex reality of the "LLM Wars"—where Google’s Gemini has surged to 650M users, narrowing the gap with ChatGPT. Join us for a data-packed retrospective as we tally the wins, admit the losses, and figure out who the real winners of 2025 are (Hint: It’s NVIDIA and Starlink, definitely not Legacy Auto). On the Scorecard this week: The "Prophecy" Audit: Which Episode One predictions hit the bullseye and which missed the mark?Real-World AI: Diagnosing heating systems via LLM & the 30% drop in customer service roles.Market Winners: Why NVIDIA is worth $4.7T and SpaceX is leaving NASA in the dust.The Political Fallout: How the rise of the far-right and Musk’s polarization affected Tesla.Health Tech Reality Check: GLP-1s, CRISPR, and why wearables are finally saving lives.