On Saturday, South by Southwest 2025 didn’t tiptoe around the future—it kicked the door down. Two of my favorite keynotes rocked the day, and they did not disappoint. Futurist Amy Webb took the stage and laid it out: we’re entering an age she calls Living Intelligence, where AI isn’t just in our phones or cloud servers;: it’s in our biology, our cities, the very fabric of reality. Her verdict? “We are not prepared.” Not exactly comforting.
Then came good old grumpy Scott Galloway, the ever-blunt NYU professor, armed with charts, predictions, and the kind of economic takes that make CEOs sweat. AI’s heading for a duopoly, Nazism is about to make a comeback, and the business landscape is shifting under our feet. Both keynotes hit with the same high energy urgency: the future isn’t creeping in: it’s slamming into us at full speed.
Amy Webb: Living Intelligence and the Next Tech Frontier
Amy Webb is the CEO of The Future Today Institute. But on stage at SXSW FTI underwent a rebranding, emerging as the Future Today Strategy Group (FTSG). “This evolution reflects a broader mission: guiding organizations through the labyrinth of technological change with strategic foresight,” said Webb. Beyond her role at FTSG, Webb imparts her knowledge as a professor of strategic foresight at NYU’s Stern School of Business. She’s also a visiting fellow at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her insights have earned her spots on the BBC’s 100 Women list and Thinkers50’s radar of influential management thinkers. She is one of my favorite cookies 😊.
Amy Webb’s keynote painted a stunning picture of “the beyond” ; a new era where AI, biotechnology, and sensors converge into what she calls Living Intelligence (LI). This isn’t your everyday smart gadget future. Living Intelligence is “a system that can sense and learn and adapt and evolve” . AI that grows and changes “like a living organism”. In other words, intelligence is escaping the server farm and embedding itself into life itself, blurring the line between the digital and the biological. And as Webb flatly noted, “Living intelligence is going to rewrite the rules of our reality as we know it today, and we are not prepared.”
Webb backed up this vision with jaw-dropping examples from her 1,000-page Tech Trends Report (https://ftsg.com/trends-download/) , showing how this convergence is already underway: AI agents are teaming up on their own: In recent experiments, swarms of AIs spontaneously organized themselves, formed alliances, and even developed their own ways to communicate without any human intervention. Makes you think… In one case, AIs invented a novel language (Microsoft’s experimental “DroidSpeak”) to chat with each other three times faster than using English , illustrating how clumsy and imprecise human language is for machine-to-machine talk.
Machines are merging with our bodies: Advanced sensors and biotech are turning us into cyborgs. Webb described in vivid detail injectable microscopic devices that roam your bloodstream and brain-computer interfaces that let paralyzed patients control devices with their thoughts. AI is literally getting under our skin, and, yaay, into our brains. On the flip side, our biology is entering computing: the first commercial computers built with living human neurons are now reality, essentially “the first living machines”. Yes, they are here already while you still try to figure out if CoPilot is a thing…
Even matter is getting intelligent: Scientists are inventing wild metamaterials (nothing to do with Zuck, luckily) with properties nature never gave us. Think building bricks that function like lungs to filter air, or buildings that shift from rigid to flexible during earthquakes. Our physical environment is starting to “come alive” and adapt in real time.
Robots with a human touch: To reach true AI prowess, Webb argues, “AGI doesn’t exist without embodiment much in the same way that our human intelligence doesn’t really exist outside of a body”. Intelligence needs a physical form. And indeed, major companies are racing to roll out humanoid robots in the next five years (despite their public denials). Thanks to rapid advances in dexterity, robots can now perform tasks once thought impossible – one AI-trained robot even learned to tie a shoelace (a task so fiddly it long stumped engineers).
Perhaps the most astonishing part of Webb’s talk was how AI and bioengineering are colliding. Thanks to new AI tools, “anybody can get biology predictions in minutes,” Webb noted, turbocharging fields like drug discovery and materials design. She rattled off advances that sounded straight out of sci-fi, yet are happening right now: Scientists growing human teeth in pigs, engineering rice with cow DNA to boost yields, creating tiny “sperm bots” to swim and improve fertility treatments.
These surreal feats elicited gasps from the SXSW crowd, and a surprised frown from me.. The implication is profound: living systems can be programmed like computers, and vice versa. This is the essence of Living Intelligence – everything around us, from our bodies to our buildings, becoming part of a connected, intelligent network.
But Webb’s message wasn’t all techno-utopia. In fact, she interwove her excitement with stark warnings. Our reach may be exceeding our grasp: all these breakthroughs are arriving with “no coordinated plan or oversight”, she cautioned. Who is thinking through the consequences? “There’s no vision for the world that we inhabit right now, there’s no long-term plan, there is no strategy,” Webb lamented, urging leaders to look beyond short-term distractions. We’re so busy worrying about the latest nuisance, the “stone in your shoe” as Webb stated that we’re not preparing for the seismic shifts ahead. For instance, if we start building computers using human neurons, she posed an unnerving ethical question: “Whose brain parts are in these computers?”. Who owns or controls intelligence that is quite literally alive?
Webb even warned of governance nightmares: without forethought, today’s flashy innovations could be weaponized tomorrow. She sketched scenarios where well-meaning tech (say, smart gadgets for convenience) gets co-opted by regimes or corporations for political control. In other words, new public-private tech partnerships might build the architecture of authoritarianism if we’re not careful. The stakes couldn’t be higher. “The decisions made in the next decade are going to determine the long-range fate of human civilization,” Webb asserted emphatically. It was a chilling reminder that the future isn’t guaranteed to be benevolent – we have to make it so.
Yet Webb did not succumb to doom and gloom. She reminded everyone that humans are not passive passengers on this ride. In a rousing call to action, she closed with a rallying cry for agency and optimism: “Remember you create the future every day with the decisions that you make. Every decision is a doorway that you can walk through to make tomorrow better.”
Webb’s final point was clear: if we start planning now, embrace ethical guidelines, and think long-term, we can harness Living Intelligence to improve the world rather than upend it. The future, in her view, is still very much ours to shape, but we can’t afford complacency or myopia for a moment longer.
Dr Grumpy
If Amy Webb peered into the technical and biological mechanics of our future, Scott Galloway zoomed out to the big-picture market and societal forces. Galloway – an NYU marketing professor and famed co-host of the Pivot podcast – took the stage with his trademark mix of hard data and blunt candor. His featured session, cheekily titled “Prof G Predictions: 2025,” offered a rapid-fire tour of the trends he believes will shape the coming year in tech, business, and culture. In classic “Prof G” style, the forecasts were bold, the critiques unsparing, and the implications unnerving.
An AI mega-duopoly will dominate: Just as past eras had Microsoft vs. Apple or Coke vs. Pepsi, Galloway sees a new titanic pairing: “OpenVIDIA.” This is his term for the twin juggernauts OpenAI and NVIDIA, which he argues are consolidating unprecedented technological and economic power. Thanks to the AI boom, these two alone command so much capital that “just eight companies now possess more deployable capital than the entire Chinese defense budget,” Galloway noted. In short, we’re looking at an AI landscape owned by a few super-players, with OpenAI’s intelligence and NVIDIA’s hardware forming a stranglehold. This concentration of power, he warned, has immense implications for global competition and innovation policy– regulators, take heed.
Galloway stated earlier that AI’s energy appetite will make nuclear unavoidable: Today’s AI models devour astronomical amounts of electricity, and that demand is only growing. Galloway’s take? “All roads lead to nuclear,” he declared flatly. To him, a nuclear energy renaissance is inevitable if we want sustainable power for our digital infrastructure. Nuclear is carbon-free and massively scalable: exactly what an AI-driven world needs. The only thing holding it back is perception. Nuclear power has long suffered a “tragic branding problem”, Galloway said, referencing decades of public fear. But like it or not, he suggests, we’ll have to get over it. The future of AI may depend on rehabilitating nuclear’s image and investing big in reactors to keep the lights on in the age of AI.
The real streaming giant? YouTube. In media, Galloway upended conventional wisdom by declaring YouTube – not Netflix – as the dominant streaming platform of the future. He pointed to YouTube’s unparalleled global reach, endless user-generated content, and the rise of long-form shows/podcasts on the platform. Netflix might have prestige TV, but YouTube has billions of eyeballs and a new generation hooked on creator-driven content. The implication: the media landscape is shifting under our feet, as audiences gravitate toward the open platform that offers both authenticity and endless choice. Traditional studios and streamers, beware: YouTube is eating your lunch.
Capital flows shift east and south: According to Galloway, we’re at a turning point where money and attention will flow away from saturated U.S. markets to faster-growing economies abroad. He emphasized a “transformative moment” as investors look to emerging markets and high-growth regions as the new centers of innovation. For businesses, this means remaining agile and going where the growth is. The next big opportunities might come from outside Silicon Valley: perhaps in India, Southeast Asia, Latin America, or Africa. Companies that cling to old playbooks could miss the boat, while those that strategically tap into these dynamic markets stand to gain the most.
Galloway didn’t stop at markets and tech: he also dove into deeper social currents that have him concerned. One notable focus was the crisis of social isolation and young men. He cited the troubling rise of loneliness and disconnection, especially among young males, calling it a slow-motion societal disaster. This is a theme Galloway has sounded before, and at SXSW he issued an urgent call for action: more mentorship, more empathy, more engagement to help young men find purpose. “If we as men want better men, we have to be better men,” he implored. In other words, older generations and leaders need to step up and model the behavior and values we want to see, or risk losing a generation to despair. It was a striking pivot from tech talk to raw social commentary, and the audience responded with earnest applause.
True to form, Galloway also eviscerated Big Tech’s leadership and morality, not just its market power. He lambasted the complacency and capitulations of today’s tech CEOs in the face of political threats. In perhaps his most provocative turn, he argued that America’s business elites – particularly in tech – are “complacently participating in America’s slow road to fascism.”
He described what he calls a “cowardice domino” effect: one by one, powerful CEOs make compromises (often excused as “doing it for shareholders”), which only embolden more egregious behavior by others, steadily eroding democratic norms. Galloway gave real examples: tech leaders attending political inaugurations they privately abhor, or media owners silencing critical voices to stay in a strongman’s good graces. Each act seems minor in isolation, but together they form a dangerous chain reaction “one kind of fascist domino following one after the other,” as he put it.
He even singled out Elon Musk, highlighting a now-infamous moment where Musk appeared to give a stiff-armed salute at an event, a gesture many found disturbingly reminiscent of a Nazi salute. Galloway told the SXSW crowd that he ran a loop of that video and thought to himself, “I refuse to normalize this bullshit.”It was a shocking soundbite, but encapsulates Galloway’s stance that tech leaders’ character matters, and that normalizing extremist flirtations – even subtle ones – for the sake of business is unacceptable. His blunt message: if we keep excusing powerful figures’ toxic behavior as just “business as usual,” we’re paving the road for something very dark in our society.
After scorching the tech titans, Galloway did offer some hope. He pointed out that where Big Tech pursues profit over purpose, it leaves voids that agile entrepreneurs can fill. There are opportunities in the spaces the giants abandon or overlook: whether it’s products and services for underserved communities, or innovations that prioritize ethical tech and privacy which big firms often sideline. The subtext was encouraging: don’t be afraid to zig when the giants zag. In a world of rapid policy and market shifts, staying principled and nimble can be a winning strategy. Galloway encouraged innovators to seize these openings, suggesting that even amid ominous trends, there is room for optimism through action.
I got the memo: the time for complacency is over. It’s time to engage, to ask hard questions, and to make bold choices that steer our collective future toward progress and away from peril. In a conference known for celebrating what’s cool and new, these two keynote speakers delivered an even more powerful takeaway: what’s new must be guided by what’s right.
Our next chapter is unwritten: and it’s up to us to write it wisely, before someone (or something) else writes it for us.
